Reasons: Yes, a very capable gun but thats is all good. Movility is mediocre, very poor armor and suvivability, lack of a turret even his machineguns are very limited and in the most of the cases are useless.
If the M4A1 goes up, so should the M4. It has more reliable armour and the applique eliminates potential weak spots. You could potentially give it T45 APCR, while not an amazing round it does offer options in uptiers.
This is a very meta vehicle. Very well armoured, gyro stab, good rate-of-fire and penetration. If we’re shifting all the regular Sherman’s up, then the Ram II (M4A5) should go up as well.
Buffing tanks that are at massive disadvantage against their peers is not compression, it’s balance. It is in fact possible for a tank to be overtiered and placed alongside a bunch of overperforming and undertiered vehicles and it is in fact possible to both improve the underperforming tanks while nerfing the overperforming ones.
I would actually love to write up a more thorough rebalance for rank 1, though the rank 2 decompression is a more pressing matter and the rank 1 rework would require the addition of new vehicles to push up address certain overly strong reserve tanks.
It really is the ultimate 75mm Sherman currently. With all the other Sherman’s going up, so should it. I would also remove the turret cheek weakspot as the turret is based on a transitional M4A2 - still while quickfix was being applied to the hull but the turret casting was thickened to remove the weakspot.
Reason: Germany is the only nation in game without acces to scouting in rank 3 for some reason. With this small change this can be fixed until more proper light tanks can be added.
Reasons: Basically is a better German M48A2 but with lower BR. So is a nosense a tank with acces to reactive armor had a lower BR than exactly the same tank without this extra armor.
We could argue all day on balance but at the end of the day most of us would rather a mediocre tank than an unbalanced one because gaijin will never properly decomp the game.
Personally I’d again like to buff weaker tanks that would be comparatively strong when lowered in BR. Seriously we could argue but dang, I will never look at something like the BT or M13 and think they are equal to the Ke-Ni lol
Again to avoid lowering and compressing more I’d rather try to buff what we can, giving the M13 a better reload would allow to to better match lower rank vehicles in terms of ROF while allowing it to stay at its higher BR given it’s advantages over a great deal of 1.0 tanks
Reason: Is unnecesary put 3 Panthers in the same BR when G and F are performing much better and are clearly a improvement over the A variant. Is good to due Germany 5.7 is composed by just poor movility heavies and TD give them a boost to his movility and tactics.
Vehicle: M13/40 (II), M13/40 (III), M14/41 BR Change: 2.0 → 1.7 or 1.3 (all modes) Reason: Listing these together due to how similar they are, the only real difference being the M14/41 has roughly 10% more HP/ton. At 2.0, these tanks seriously struggle as they are slower than most tanks already and cannot flank the opponent, yet they do not have the penetration to deal with most of their peers frontally either (much less the tanks they face in uptiers). Having only about 47mm of penetration in ideal circumstances is a major handicap at this BR and needs equally major advantages in other categories to make up for this. The AS 42/47 works just fine at this BR with the same gun because of its diminutive size and great mobility that allow you to pick your fights and flank. The M14/40s and M14/41 simply do not have the tools to work around their anemic firepower. 1.3 is likely too low for these tanks, but there are already a number of much more powerful tanks at 1.3.
The Pz III J at 1.3 outclasses these tanks in almost all ways, only having an inferior turret shape and slightly slower RoF setting it back.
In an ideal world, I would prefer to see rank 1 decompressed, but I question if there’s the playerbase in low tiers to support this. Additionally, with how cramped the tanks above this area are already, this would require moving practically every tank in the game up in BR. For now, just buffing the underpeforming tanks and nerfing the overperforming ones seems like the least bad option.
Currently, it’s configured with a 6 second reload, slower than all other Challengers, and placed at 12.0… where it has no lineup whatsoever.
To make it a more interesting tank and for it to actually have a lineup, I suggest two options:
1- With its 6 second reload, be placed at 11.7. There, its higher penetration will be a sidegrade offset by the slower reload and lack of spall liners.
2- Get a 5 second reload, even if it means going up to 12.7, where it would be a part of the top lineup and which would make sense, since this tank was initially meant to be the pinnacle of the British tree from the moment it was introduced.
Instead of nerfing it so it’s a lower BR, I believe it should be given the 5 second reload and placed at 12.3-12.7 so it’s more relevant at top tier.
At 12.0, it serves no purpose and fills no role at all.
Good changes all around. I was playing the M24DK the other night and it certainly felt like i needed to be 4.0, especially if the Sav is moving up. Turm III / BI going up, lol, love to see it.
Vehicle: M15/42 BR Change: 2.7 → 2.3 or 2.0 (all modes) Reason: This tank is truly hopeless in an uptier. While it does have improved firepower and mobility compared to the M13/40 and M14/41, these are marginal improvements that allow it to penetrate 60mm of armor instead of 47mm or to have 12 HP/ton instead of 10 HP/ton. Its current peers all have significantly better armor, firepower, and mobility. 2.3 would be a good starting point, but I do not think this would be problematic at 2.0. The 3.3 decompression helps this tank for sure, but it needs a lot more help still.
The Pz III J1 at 2.7 is significantly better in all regards than the M15/42, its only disadvantage being its large cupola. The T-50 has pretty tough armor combined with blazing speed and a strong gun. Its notoriously slow turret isn’t all that much slower than the M15/42’s. The Chi-He is a fairly comfortable platform with a stabilizer that excels in supporting from hull down and moving to support the team. The M15/42 has no niche that it can carve out for itself against these.
I personally find the IS-2 harder to autocannon to death (in 341) than the IS-3, IS-4 and IS-6, lol. But yeah, you’d rather be in a KT than an IS-2 the majority of the time. That reload… zzzz.
I didn’t mention it in the original suggestion, but there’s also the option of the Comp.B filled version of M1 HE that would have around 3 kg TNT eqv. That would likely push the explosive penetration past 30 mm.
The M1 HE round was also compatible with the M78 fuze. That basically turns it into a SAP round with ~30 mm of KE penetration after running it through the DeMarre formula. That wouldn’t really change too much however, other than that it’s less likely to get absorbed by tracks and spaced armor, but would probably overpen a truck. The increased mass of the fuze might slightly improve the explosive penetration over distance at least, depending on how the game calculates that.