Its the most op vehicle ever, especially on open maps. 2nd gen thermals and laser ranging. They butcher their way through the enemy team without them even having the slightest chance. There are no other good thermals around for counterspotting, well maybe a few weak IFV with 1st gen. The speed they spot and aquire targets, set up their gun and snipe it…no chance for others at this BR. Its like they’re the only ones seeing among blinds.
Just had a match on this new, open Normandy map. They killed everything themselves and my Leopard 1 didn’t even saw a single enemy to shot, they picked everything off across the map.
Which is way above average for a premium at that BR.
Yea no… they balance around profits and mood most of the time.
And about your point regarding it struggeling with heavies… the LRF takes care of that… rangefind the cupola and shoot. The gun is so laser accurate that even at above 1km range it does not deviate enough to actually matter most of the time.
Yes it is situational, but it has all the tools needed to be 9.0 worthy, so why have it at 7.7? It just adds features to the BR range which should not exist inside it. LRF with thermals on a big tank killing gun is just adding to the compression we face
Let me disagree, the VIDAR gonna have all it’s pros even at 9.3 but the difference is there are other vehicles which can match its abilities. LR in 7.7? thermal in 7.7? kind of fast reload and high muzzle velocity? This is a joke, how could I defeat it on an open map? Its really unhealthy gameplay, when some kind of maps are ruled by ONE vehicle. Also the ‘no armor best armor’ anomaly is true in its case…
All this is, how gaijin makes easy money, they gonna move it up because it has ridiculous stats, until then stay strong. (Look at EBR 1954, it was 3.7 (!!!) now its 6.7, the devs makes huge mistakes I hope it will be fixed soon)
it’s a 1999 (year it first entered service) “modern day vehicle” that has been releashed less than what? 2 months after their BR changes to try and prevent early cold war/late WW2 era tanks from fighting tanks that have thermals and LRF
it is equiped with thermals that are better/newer gen than a handful of top tier tanks (I’m looking at you T-80UK)
while yes it does rely on HE rounds to do it’s damage I have just within the last 24 hours been killed by it hitting the direct front of my turret in an, (American) T34, T32, T29, T30, IS-3, IS-4M, T-10, IS-6, Tiger 2 H, Tiger 2 P, Tiger 2 H SLA.16 Jagpather G1, and a Jagtiger
all of which have a rather large amount of frontal armor and most of which have the crew sitting farther back in the turret (at least in the American T series of tanks)
yes it is rather large and not the fastest thing out there and it might not have a ton of armor either but for the type of vehicle that it is that is very much par for the course
I would say 8.3 would be fine because at it’s BR it can fight almost every heavy tank/TD I listed in down tiers
there is no logical reason other than money/greed that a paid/premium tank that entered service in 1999 should be fighting a tank that entered service back in 1944-1945
I can very much confirm it can one-shot Jagdtigers, even hull-down. I got killed this way a couple of days ago. While it’s not a speed demon, it’s still quite mobile for the sort of damage it can do, and can get to a sniping position quite quickly if the player knows the maps well.
So far, its only saving grace is that its damage model isn’t broken. I can reliably one-shot it with the PAK44, which is not the same I can say for other vehicles of its ilk. But still, you need the player to make a mistake in order to do that, because if they’re using it properly, you’ll never see them coming until the death cam hits you.
while you are not wrong in the slightest, it is still overall not a good vehicle type for well at least how I prefer to play (light/medium tanks flank and spank)
The guy at Gaijin looking at the bottom line…
It will sell better when it is over powered, like what Gaijin usually does when new premiums are released.
And then people still say this game is not P2W…
As I said in that comment, when I wrote that, I had not yet seen it in game, and had assumed it would have the same drawbacks as the other 155mm howitzers in game. Even with a laser rangefinder, I didn’t think the slow velocity and very specific shots you needed would be a good combo.
I did not realize just how good the OE F3 shell was, both in terms of TNT equivalent and in velocity. Velocity wise, it’s effectively just a standard AP shell in terms of ballistics, and the explosive mass makes it absurdly forgiving for shot placement, and makes tanks that were incredibly hard to deal with in something like a Type 75 basically a non-issue. Combined with the laser rangefinder, and it’s much easier to take out anything you can see than I expected.
The thermals are still probably overvalued. This is the tier where it really needs to start being beaten into people’s heads that sitting around exposed out of cover is a good way to get your head taken off, and it’s far better to stay concealed behind cover and only poke when you have a shot. Thus being able to spot these tanks isn’t that useful.
The lack of a stabilizer has me cautious about how far up we put it, but 8.3 might be a decent spot for it.
so I actually did buy it myself, to get hands on with it and see just exactly how good it was, even in my rather inexperienced hands (I have only used the Chi-Ha LG in terms of SPH before this). In my very first match with it, not particularly playing well at all I managed to snatch out 8 kills
I will admit that I am not a very good player overall, as my avg in a match is like 2-3 kills even when I think I’m doing well.
after actually using it myself for about an hour or two now, I can only double down on my opinion that it is very much under tiered, as I one shot several Tiger 2’s by just shooting them in the frontal plates both turret and just upper front plate.
Yes, with the caveat however that Gaijin continues to alter maps to “encourage” you to expose said head, so it can be taken off faster. And that all else being equal, you still have a sniper relying purely on eyesight (Jagdtiger for me, for example) vs gen 2 thermals. They might be overestimated in an absolute sense, but when you add them to everything else, the advantages start to seriously add up.
IMHO the Vidar simply shouldn’t see WW2 heavies, at least most of them, the Korean War era heavies or the lol heavies like the Maus are obviously a different thing. I agree that we shouldn’t blast it upward into top tier. I’d even be ok with it being tested at 8.0 first, but after the recent decompression, 8.3 is basically the old 7.7 and 8.0 for the most part, so I think it would be okay there.
For SPG it does not matter if they sit at 7.7, 8.7 or 9.7, their effectiveness is the same, a fat HE shell is a fat HE shell, the VIDAR has no problems killing a Leopard 2 PSO or a Tiger II, but other vehicles around them have a hard time, especially if you put it at 7.7 with thermals and a laser rangefinder, at that BR most tanks barely have a laser rangefinder, let alone thermals, and the VIDAR can just drop shells across the map.
The thing belongs to 8.3 or 8.7, it would not lose any viability, it’s a SPG it will always be “worse” than MBTs, but at least at 8.7 it wont be a complete massacre of the enemy team, thanks to the thermals+lrf+best HE shell in the game combo.