I was referring more to the big slow heavies, not so much the “heaviums” like the Tiger 1 and Jumbos.
I’m surprised when Phly made a video on the T95 that his meme distorted thumbnail wasn’t just the muzzle brake on tracks. Because that is what driving it honestly feels like. What “armor”? Everyone either LOLpens or barrels it. Armor only matters if they miss the muzzle brake somehow.
I literally got a nuke in the Tiger 2 yesterday. Heavy tanks are only approaching “bad” when you meet all the out-of-place HEAT slingers at 6.7 and around.
You can get a nuke in anything, you can do well in anything, that’s not a metric for something being good or not.
At 6.7 you’re well into heatfs and APDS territory, the Tiger ll is good as long as you don’t get shot at, so it’s good despite it’s armor more than because of it… it’s the firepower and mobility that mostly makes up for it.
Again as I said, it’s a fantastic tank as long as you don’t meet any of the misplaced post-war vehicles that will trivialize your armor at any range. They don’t belong at WW2 BRs and really deserve their own BR range to be away from both them and the actually good cold war stuff.
Firepower is good, mobility is lacking. Armor is good enough.
They do though. Heavy tanks consistently have exceptional armour and typically great firepower, though lower mobility. Especially at mid-tier they’re the strongest vehicle class by a long shot. This seems like just another clueless heavy main who wants heavy tanks to be completely invulnerable with no weaknesses, which is both unrealistic and not good for gameplay.
People like to complain about light tanks with APDS or HEAT-FS at mid tier, claiming they trivialize armour. But no one ever seems to talk about how these tanks have trivial armour themselves, easily penetrated by even some SPAA. In a heavy tank, just shoot the dam thing. You can’t expect to brain off and be inv- [title card]. Same with medium tanks, they can easily kill lights but often not heavies. You can kinda oversimplify it to a rock-paper-scissors type situation where lights beat heavies, heavies beat mediums, and mediums beat lights. This is good- if light vehicles didn’t exist heavy tanks would have no weaknesses and there would be no reason to use anything else, like in WoT. So use heavy tanks as they were intended - as spearheads with the support of lighter vehicles. Not alone in the open and expecting to block everything coming your way.
Speed is a relevant stat at any BR and is largely unaffected even by massive uptiers. Armor isn’t.
Plus, it’s fundamentally unbalanced to have a heavy tank’s armor completely trivialized, at any range, by an opponent at the same BR that isn’t making big tradeoffs in other areas - for example, the Nashorn has a fantastic gun that can deal with any heavy tank - but is huge, has no gun depression, and its protection is… cosmetic.
At most a light tank trades some amount of postpen damage, or is clumsy to use in some way.
But where do tank destroyers, tanks specialized to dealing with heavy armor, fit in with all of this? Would be more accurate to include them as being countered by light tanks due to often being casemates with either no protection or very low mobility.
They make tradeoffs in armour as well as post-pen. Typically, any vehicle at the BR can easily penetrate and destroy a light tank in a single shot. Meanwhile, the light tank can destroy any tank in several shots. But medium tanks cannot penetrate heavy tanks. So, light tanks have a massive weakness when confronted with medium tanks compared to heavy tanks confronting mediums.
Tank destroyers typically were just cheaper than ordinary tanks and not more effective. A StuG III for example is essentially just a casemate Panzer IV. With a few exceptions, WWII tank destroyers are just light, medium, or heavy tanks with a few quirks and not specialized tank-killers, because in game everything is a tank killer as there’s no infantry nor emplacements to target, only vehicles. So TDs are usually not valid counters to heavy tanks as they typically have firepower, mobility, and armour equivalent to medium or heavy tanks of the same BR. They are only tank hunters historically doctrinally, not performance-wise in-game.
You can find an almost as good gun at 2.3 on the Marder III, or 3.0 for a slightly better one (than the Pz IVs) on the Marder III H and that one event SdKfz 251 halftrack.
If you want a long 88, it starts at 5.3 on a TD but 6.7 for a heavy tank. Similar BR differences for the short 88 (Flakbus) or 128 (Sturer Emil). Dicker Max doesn’t have a counterpart in an actual tank but for 3.7 it’s a fantastic cannon and would definitely be at least 5.0 if its platform wasn’t so bad.
And likewise, there is not a single heavy tank at their BRs that can stop these tank destroyers’ guns reliably. Churchills and KV-1s might have great armor but the Dicker Max is boasting 187mm pen at 3.7 with enough filler to (sometimes) overpressure open tops with a very near miss.
These are all very much tank hunters.
Which is why they use their ever-relevant speed and don’t engage head-on.
What it actually does is makes playing heavies more braindead, makes mediums useless for doing anything other than killing light tanks or TDs, and forces lights to have to only be able to do anything by hoping that Gaijin doesn’t keep getting rid of every single flanking spot in every map in the game.
Ah yes, “let’s make the game have more variety by making heavies, light tanks, mediums, and TDs play only one way.”
Harder to kill from the front =/= frontally invulnerable.
That’s not remotely what I said.
depending on the nation and BR, they mostly are, Tigers face ww2 stuff mostly, M103 and Conqueror face IS3 and the other soviet heavies. outside of bullshit prototypes and SPAAGs the heavies are relatively close to opponents from the same rough era within fair reason, would be unfair for cromwells to see a maus
Just tried a match in my IS-7. One tapped by a Leopard from the distant future, then flanked by a Turm III and Leo from the future, got beaten back to hangar with 410 score. WTF IS THIS!
HEAVY TANKS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE BOSS TANKS!
Just died 450 score again, Type 99 from the future nuked my underside
That would be unbalanced and not fun to fight against. If they were boss tanks, there would be a limit of how many could spawn, or that they would be incredibly expensive to spawn.
Also, if you were flanked, that’s partially on you.
Oh, bohoo, cope harder
At the moment you are the one advocating for a IS-7 heavy tank to only face far inferior vehicles.
If that ain’t coping, idk what is.
Okay, let’s let a medieval knight fight against the terminator, historycally accurate and fair
/s
You’re the one complaining here. I am just stating a fact.
It’s called balancing. History isn’t balanced, multiplayer games should be balanced, otherwise play singleplayer games instead.
This is not a fact but slander. I want it to face what was there at that timeframe, if those units were too weak, well, life ain’t fair, too bad.
So does that mean you want an unbalanced game? Because I think that’s what you would achieve with your proposal.