As I was saying in the title. These two vehicles literally shares similar stats with each other. Similar pen(E.B.R. being 104mm and no APCR, Sd.kfz being 106mm with 137mm pen APCR), similar max speed(E.B.R. being 105km/h, Sd.kfz being 90km/h and both have reverse gearbox), and Sd.kfz has way faster reload(E.B.R. being 7.8s and Sd.kfz being 4.8s). Sd.kfz is better than E.B.R. (1951) in everyway. Why is E.B.R. (1951) two BRs above Sd.kfz234/2?
EBR has lower profile + bigger boom boom boom
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I don’t think these small advantages could worth 2 BRs. Not to mention you went from facing against weak armor enemies like T-34, Sherman and PzVI to IS, Jumbo, Tiger and Panther.
A 75mm is going to pack a lot more punch than a 50mm, you also get overmatching and the likes, think you also get like double the turret rotation which is a large weakness for the Puma to get on target, and as they’re being paired with the US a lot they don’t have to worry about .50s as much either which is a world of difference.
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But facing against 3.3 enemies and 5.3 enemies are different. You gotta pen your enemies first then consider the explosive filler. Penetrating Jumbo, IS, Tiger and Panthers with 104mm pen round are way harder that penetrating a 3.3 vehicle. And I think they no longer use historical teaming long ago, EBR could face US too.
All three of those are easy to pen with the EBR. Maybe don’t charge right at them.
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And the Puma is a low BR vehicle in a major nation tree which will have it be played by more new players, opposed to the EBR is a minor nation tree that attracts a different player base, which is going to always have the EBR outperform the Puma.
Puma and EBR are both performing poorly statistically anyways.
Besides the Puma is the only light tank Germany gets until 6.3 for reasons unknown to me, where France gets the Crusader and AMX-13 as well.
Maybe I’m talking about why are two similar vehicle at different BRs and not how to kill 5.3 tanks, my dear friend.
So basically is the player base rather than vehicle stats. But wouldn’t this become a vicious circle? New players would give up a minor nation because their vehicles’ BR are too high. And only the skilled veterans know how to handle them. And their BR would just stay high basically denying every new players’ chance to play a unique nation. This sucks.
Yup, welcome to Warthunder, that is exactly what happens.
You’ve have figured it out, we’re still waiting for Gaijin to do so.
We’ve been in this cycle for the last decade now.
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The EBR is a beast in 5.3 if it’s played correctly.
Even if the puma penetrates more armor, the ebr does more post-pen damages due to the fact that it has a 75 mm gun instead of a 50 mm one and its APHE has slightly more TNT equivalent (63g vs 28g). The sdkfz does have APCR but the damages that it does are ridiculous in comparison to the 75mm solid shot : puma shells lose far more energy than EBR ones, meaning that it will penetrate less armor at long ranges. EBR Does perform better on off-road thanks to its central metal wheels while being a bit more armored than its German counterpart. It has also a better turret rotation speed (22°/s vs 11°/s).
It has a smaller silhouette and is less likely to catch fire with its motor on the floor of the tank.
I can maybe forget some details but there are the main ones.
Spoiler
It was even better when it was in 4.7 :)
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If a new player would choose France to start war thunder, this person would have stopped at 1.7/2.7 because the great majority of players would’nt play a nation that is only pain. My opinion is that France starts to be good at 3.3/3.7, gets interesting at 5.3 and gets really fun at ~7.7.
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Wow, you really like EBR. I don’t think those pros would make EBR at 5.3 reasonable but I respect your opinion cuz I can tell you love France tech tree just like I do.
Yeah, the low tier of France is literal hell. I spaded all those terrible 1.0 vehicles can u believe that? ARL and Jumbo are good vehicles at 5.3. I spaded EBR when it was 5.0, played it with SA50 Sherman. I did feel fun playing it but I had a horrible time with EBR at 5.3.
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New players don’t understand how the game works. For new players, easy to use vehicles result in the best performance compared to vehicles that can be much better when someone knows what he is doing. They are similiar in the role they are play, as fast moving light vehicles that can scout.
But for other traits the EBR and Puma are only similiar in the eyes of someone who doesn’t have the experience recognizing important traits and merely compares two vehicles against each other.
But let’s just do that for simplicity. They have near identical mobility with the Puma being slightly better but the EBR has the faster traverse and the gun deals more damage.
The EBR will therefore always come out on top when it comes to fighting the Puma.
In theory the Puma will never win because the EBR can shoot first and a hit is more likely to destroy the Puma than vice versa.
But of course can the EBR destroy a Puma, when the opportunity presents itself.
If we make an infinite number of mock battles with players of equal skill and remove all the kills due to taking risks or simply getting ambushed, the result would be that in any other case the EBR wins.
So if the EBR is the going to be better, it would naturally have a higher BR.
But of course it’s not so simple. If we make the same comparison with the Pz IV F2 and M4A1, the Sherman is always going to destroy the Pz IV.
Despite both being mediums, the Pz IV and M4A1 have lots of differences that result in different playstyles and better performance against different oponents depending on the situation.
The EBR is pretty much a straight upgrade over the Puma.
Take a Puma at 3.3 and give it a 75mm with better post-pen, resulting in much more one-shot kills from the side and prevents players from turning their vehicle away.
Then give it better traverse to have the ability to faster move your gun to where it needs to point.
Increase the armor and place fuel tanks on the the sides to become less vulnerable to .50cal rounds and weak AT rounds against the turret, boosting survivability.
Lastly move the engine to the hull floor where it’s less likely to be taken out when penetrated.
At 5.3 you don’t fight much different opponents than at 3.3.
What difference does it make to meet an 75mm M4A2 or a 76mm M4A2?
But with better post-pen damage, it’s much easier to take out these upgunned medium tanks at the cost of meeting opponents that can be almost impossible to destroy.
But a light tank doesn’t need to take a fight. You can just retreat and fight another battle somewhere else.
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I like the idea of comparing the 1951 to the Puma.
It shows that you don’t know what the hell the tank is best compared to.
Which is… the Chaffee.
Because this specific EBR is, well, for all intents and purposes, just an overall worse Chaffee. On wheels. Which makes Gaijin think it’s somehow “busted”.
The gun is the same, the handling of the gun is much worse, half-sure the reload is slower (not to mention that this is a manually loaded EBR as opposed to the 1953), even with all the buffs to wheeled vehicles recently the driving performance is bloody awful compared to having tracks and it’s infinitely less survivable as it’s made of paper and your entire crew is very nicely lined up for a single .50 cal to brain all of them with shrapnel.
And no short-stop stab either.
Chaffee is 3.7, EBR 1951 is 5.3
Make of this what you will.
because their speed allows them to out position heavily armored vehicles at their BR range and their gun can penetrate the side of said tanks with relative ease
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It would be fine at 5.3 if most maps allowed for good, high quality flanking.
It would be fine at 4.3, and not op at all. To me it just seems like an AMX-13 (M24) or AMX-13 (fl11) counterpart.
It’s fast, but most maps don’t give you that much of an advantage if you are much faster than other tanks.
So does the puma and it is 2.0 lower, you literally get like 30 g more of tnt and a better turret rotation, while taking longer to reload, slower vertical elevation speed and not being inmune to aphe from the sides, and it is somehow 2 br higher than the puma, if this is 5.3 material so does the puma
The EBR has a better gun than the PUMA and is faster.
Both have negligible armor. The EBR is a better rat tank.
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a barely better gun and barely faster, and it is 2 br over the puma, thats just bs dude