Why are Heavy Tanks not allowed to actually function as HEAVY TANKS?

Much less vulnerable to flanking, too.

Personally, I play with the USA, an example of the tanks I face with the crappy M4A3E2 are the Tiger and Panther, from Russia they are the IS-1 is-2… the jumbo can’t handle a fart while these others work hard to penetrate the armor

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Shoot the cupola on all of them. Almost guaranteed to kill the entire turret crew and it is always shown before the gun if they are cresting a hill. If the turret is shown, most of the time you can hit these cupolas.

This breaks down into two main areas, both related.

Basically, heavy tanks get shafted because of the general community consensus that something is overpowered if it is frontally indestructible.

Hence why rounds that for all purposes ignore armor keep dropping in BR with time, and hence why barrel damage remains so obnoxious.

I always have believed that to help heavy tanks, you need to un-nerf the rounds designed to kill them. This would make heavies die more easily, removing artificial “survivability,” thereby forcing their BRs down to where their armor actually matters, and forcing all the go-karts up tremendously. The last “traditional” heavies would max out at 7.0 with the Maus, E-100, and IS-4M. The only heavies beyond that would be “gun tanks” like the M103, Surbaisse/Surblinde, Foch, Caern, Conq, IS-6, T-10 series, IS-7, and 279, all of which are far too mobile to be traditional heavy tanks. I suppose the KT105 with its hilarious engine also counts among these.

Making barrel damage less obnoxious, at least from whoever you are pointing your gun at, is also important. All tanks suffer from this, but the heavies and turretless TDs suffer most here due to having the biggest calibers, often the biggest muzzle brakes, and usually the slowest turret traverse if they have turrets at all.

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With the 3.7 KV-1 APHE at 500m.

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It’s extremely small, to the point of being completely obscured if you’re using even 1-2 degrees of gun depression, and it additionally can easily be hidden by bushes (which are obtained for free from the battle pass).

And it’s also obscured at very close range, as the Churchill is additionally taller.

Again - a literal pixel wide line weakspot. Not quite a great showing, is it?

Pen system does not show that if you hit the upper portion of the tracks, with APHE types, it will bounce from there into the cramped turret and perform OHK or severe disabling damage.

Just don’t tell anyone or vehicles versing it might not keep dropping in BR (of course this has already happened).

If you face Germany you will be countered by 3.3 vehicles in your 4.3 and 4.7 Churchills.

Edit: and of course Churchill in an infantry tank so will never properly fit WT.

Exactly, and the track weakspots frontally also don’t show.

In AB heavies are absolutely meta, though, and it needs to go the opposite way lol

And panthers need to be classed as a heavy there, because they should not be keeping up with pumas and chaffees.

The entire turret roof? i do it all the time.

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They honestly should, it encourages alternate gameplay, it encourages Lights and Mediums to go on the flanks, It encourages other Heavies to do their job in Tanking shells as distractions, and it encourages people to play tank destroyers, Knocking holes in heavily armored targets, and not just camping at the back covered in bushes.

IDK why this is so Controversial a opinion, The game all around is just getting boring as is due to the Lack of Variety of gameplay, Making Heavy tanks be balanced around being harder to kill from the front, instead of them just being at BR’s where vehicles can frontally pen them with ease without even needing to aim for weakspots, Would encourage alot more Variety i how people play, and would encourage people to branch out into other tanks, instead of just playing the same 3 vehicles.

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Something something survivability onion, something something average heavy tank user being too braindead to play into it

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Are you stuck in 2020 or something. Soviet heavies are probably the only overtiered things in the ussr tech tree

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“You dont understand i NEED to be able to sit in the open and not worry about getting penned. I shouldnt NEED to have to know enemy tanks and if they are a threat or not”
-heavy main

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That is not what im saying at all.

But go off dude.

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That is what 99% of complaints for heavy tanks stem from and frankly this thread is no exception. You just want big reward for little investment (skill) and don’t realize those medium tanks have to weakspot you but not the other way around most days

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Pretty much. After i changed my playstyle in the maus, i have been getting a lot more kills.

The advantage of a heavy is that it can effectively push more tanks than a medium. It cant effectively push everything it faces though so you have to have knowledge of enemy tanks and what you can/cannot push.

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Huh, Ive always thought that in general almost all heavy tanks are completely fine and perfectly competitive up to around 7.0 when HEATFS and APDS starts becoming common.

As it stands currently a team, or even a decent squad of players in Tigers can literally drive through the middle of a map obliterating everything and its extremely difficult to stop them.

Like, its not even difficult, I havent played the tiger in months and months, probably even a year. Neither had either of my squad mates. Yet we just drove through the middle of the map and no one could stop us.

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Ironically, making heavy tanks weaker still is likely what would “save” them. Many of them sit at such questionable BRs because of their ability to eat multiple penetrating shots (sometimes a ridiculous number) before dying.

That wouldn’t happen so often if the rounds meant to kill them were not so gimped in post-penetration damage. APCR, first-gen APDS, HEAT(FS), HESH, and in some aspects even HE is still acting strange.

By rebuffing those rounds further, it would both make platforms reliant on such rounds more fun to play for the user, as most of the go-karts feature 90mm HEAT with rather punishing reloads (except for the AMX-13/90 and Jpz 4-5) where you get splattered if you don’t cripple the opponent on the first shot, as well as greatly lower heavy survivability, forcing heavy BRs down to where their armor is more likely to stop incoming shots.

Then, when a heavy is penetrated, it would die pretty reliably like any other tank.

Separately, barrel damage needs looking into. This is only a problem because of the point-blank engagement ranges on most maps. A shot to the tip of your barrel from the guy you’re pointing it at disables the entire gun, effectively allowing him to ignore your armor even if he doesn’t have a high-pen shell.

In other threads on barrel damage, proposals I very much agree with are to divide the barrel into multiple segments, so that damaging the barrel tip frontally would only really mess up long-range accuracy and no longer be the short-range crippling that currently makes it so infuriating. It would be unchanged if you saw someone’s barrel sticking out from around a corner and you shot through the side of it.

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Ironically, making heavy tanks weaker still is likely what would “save” them. Many of them sit at such questionable BRs because of their ability to eat multiple penetrating shots (sometimes a ridiculous number) before dying.

Depends on the vehicle, think heavy tanks are generally the worst at surviving… a Tiger ll is a one shot practically every time, as is a Tiger 1… some of the American ones are survivable due to their size and crew layout, but it’s the light armor that doesn’t trigger fuses.

If you’re penning multiple rounds and not killing you just aren’t’ aiming for crew or ammo tho, and the fact you’re able to pen a heavy tank that often is more of a problem.

That wouldn’t happen so often if the rounds meant to kill them were not so gimped in post-penetration damage. APCR, first-gen APDS, HEAT(FS), HESH, and in some aspects even HE is still acting strange

Not so much an issue with heavy tanks but yeah ammo performance is a clownshow for almost anything that isn’t APHE or APFSDS, and even there the lower calibre rounds are incredibly gimped.

Separately, barrel damage needs looking into.

My main issue with barrel damage is that shooting the muzzle break disables the whole thing, which results in a target several times the size of the actual barrel, a nightmare compared to the US with tiny little 76mm barrels.

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