There is a weird short circuit going on in these discussions. People who want heavy tanks to do better will ask for historical matchmaking so their Tiger II can stomp everything. People who don’t want heavy tanks to do better can also use the same fallacy and say that it’s historically accurate for heavy tanks to suck.
I don’t care about historical accuracy, WT is balanced by performance. So, if we look just at performance, what do we see? Some heavy tanks perform above the average for their BR, Gaijin specifically singled out the Tiger II and the T29 as an example of this. But in more general terms, mobility is the meta and heavy tanks underperform.
Those that suffer the most are slow, turretless TDs however.
Rather than focus too much on this or that heavy and this or that BR, a good starting point would be to think about how we can make mobility less powerful in matches - or alternatively, how we can make lack of mobility less punishing.
But we can in-fact have both: heavy tanks feeling scary and not being OP.
Want to know how is this possible?
First: raise the base SP cost of all heavy tanks/SPGs to about 300 SP, so that you can’t spawn then at the beginning of the match, you have to play with a medium/light first and gain points.
Second: as you might’ve already realized, lower the BR of all heavy tanks in the game by 0.7-1.0 BR. This way whenever you see one while driving a medium tank, you feel like you’re facing a dangerous threat and might consider retreating and flanking it, or ambushing it as it drives by, instead of pushing it frontally and relying on taking out his barrel, because gaming logic.
Third: reduce the effectiveness of air bombs aganst well armoured AFVs in this game. Make it so most bomb explosions, other than direct hits, only take out external modules like tracks and gun barrel.
Well, I say it’s an acceptable solution, even if some nations would become less desirable at certain BRs dues to lack of heavy tanks. Don’t forget: with their SP costs increased, you’d be able to spawn twice in a medium instead.
Fine, I guess, there is no need to nerf bombs.
Dealing with a Tiger II at 4.7 is not so bad. Yes, it would be frontally immune to any weapon, but it still has only 80mm of mostly flat side armour. A lot of tanks at that BR can take it out if they don’t mindlessly push it from the front.
If anything I say a KV-1 at 1.7-2.0 is a much more terrifying sight than a KT at 4.7.
So, the exact BR lowering is not final and subject to balancing for every specific vehicle.
What if it costs 500 SP? 1000 SP? Do you still think it’s unreasonable?
Because of the cluttered, city maps prevalent in the game and such, this slow piece of shit, might get flanked, tracked and killed by a T-34/76 before it manages to kill anybody. And all those SPs down the drain.