It will be a little bit better, when they fix the superstructure armor. (Should also be 50mm.)
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I didnt, i enjoyed much more the sturer emil
No one forces you to rely on the armor or to play as a t34 or m4, this is an player issue not a problem of the tank itself, pz3/4 are good tanks, and arguably underbr, but this is also an issue with other tanks at these br.
It’s like most 105 guns at low br. Slaps but gets eaten alive with bad positioning. I just don’t use it on city maps.
panzer 4 gun is better than 76.2 t34 and 75 Sherman but the hull is so much worse so it evens back out in the other direction.
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I wholeheartedly agree that Panzer IIIs and IVs with long-barrel guns are hideously undertiered.
We see with Japanese tanks where the IVs should go (other than the Chi-Ri, obviously). The IIIs would work just fine at 3.3, 3.7, and 4.0 if we saw a global rebuff to APCR postpen, a rework of APCR penetration numbers akin to what happened with early APDS, and removal of the idiotic shell shattering nonsense.
A 150mm pen gun with a 4-second aced reload on a fairly small platform with deceptively large amounts of spaced armor would actually be quite potent.
That same APCR rebuff would also help elevate the Panzer 4 series. 180mm pen rounds are nothing to sneeze at.
And that same global rebuff would serve to fix so. much. shit. in every other tech tree, Russia included.
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Yeah, no. What are you dreaming of at night?!
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Every ammo type actually working well, and long-gun Panzers treated the same as the likes of long-gun Shermans, long-gun T-34s, and long-gun Japanese tanks?
Except that both T34 and Sherman are already better as is? And an improved HVAP wont change that, the APCBC will always be the best shell. And the Pz IV is simply a glass cannon, that wont change. Pushing it upwards wont help. The Japanese tanks are rather too high.
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Armor does matter, the ammount of times you survive a hit in an M4, or especially a T34 tends to be pretty high. Especially in frontal and close quarter engagements. And depending on the map, there’s no way to really avoid those.
While Armor isn’t “reliable”, it’s very much a factor and it buys you time. Because point > click > delete is slowed down quite a bit by point > aim > click > delete.
The difference becomes especially noticeable when you play a “third party” like Japan, where you don’t have much armor to begin with and at times fairly low pen guns. M4 and especially T34 are way more survivable and fit quite a few of the maps especially the close quarter fighting ones much better than Panzer 3/4.
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Yeah, quite a few Japanese tanks are overtiered. Minor nation tax and folks not seeing them as often so not knowing how to handle them. But playing the Chi-Nu (1, not 2) I’d rather face Italian or German tanks than American or Russian ones.
I’m dead when hit no matter what, and I can usually do the same to Italian and German tanks simply by lolpenning them. For American tanks I need to aim somewhat, for Russian ones quite a bit.
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Try playing a Tiger 1, then you’ll die constantly without warning to a plane multiple BR steps lower, with enough ammo to do that to half your team
I saw it,saw videos of it,saw other people that arent CC play it,i dont need more proof
No?
Lmfao you never played that 262 seems like
Heck no lmfao,you cant really miss a FaF missile from the F111F
like any other plane / heli with FaF missiles tbh
More like SPAA should get better instead
I still dont understand it no,i play a lot of CAS that ranges from gun runs to just dropping bombs
I know how it works and i know the Yak9k over performs
APCR buff should be a thing ngl
They are beyond useless in its current state
Ok, tbf thats shure is something.
Panzer IVs, Tiger 2s. Leopard 2s were also before they nerfed their angles. Panthers also?
no, people see decently mobile chassis with great cannon and fast reload and ask “why 3.3”
Especially when they played at least several years before when it was 4.0 for IV G
I spaded both of those years ago, and bought the Japanese one too. I had already read up from countless forum discussions about how angling works, but quickly observed in practice that the Tigers function much better if treated like mediums than heavies. Upon flanking with them like I would in a Jumbo Sherman, they work exceptionally well. I even got a free talisman on the H1 by sheer luck (and also the Jumbo 76 for that matter).
Planes killing me in any ground vehicle or naval vessel does not bother me much. Only if it is specifically an act of revenge killing does it slightly bug me - but I see that as squarely the fault of not the plane directly, but the kill camera and planes being allowed to spawn in midair which both gives me very little time to relocate and also tells them exactly where I am even if I surprised them when they weren’t paying attention.
This is how my ideas began on this front.
I saw a repetitive cycle of the following:
- Plane exists and is used as CAS
- Certain people cry foul about that plane (often but not limited to supporters of the forum religion known as “tank-only mode”)
- Ordinary players who just happen to have unlucky streaks begin snowballing onto rant threads in the forum, Reddit, and elsewhere about a particular weapon or weapons the plane in question uses.
- Ranting snowballs out of control, setting a dumpster fire out behind Gaijin HQ that is fanned further by an array of CCs looking to cash in on the FotM.
- The dumpster fire starts affecting Gaijin’s bottom line, at which point upper management says to the devs “fix this now ASAP, we don’t care how”
- Devs usually respond with some kind of nerf to the plane’s flight characteristics, its weaponry, its BR, or sometimes all three. If any other plane happens to share that weaponry, it gets nuked as collateral damage.
- Whining snowball stops as the sweet, sweet morphine of the painkiller nerf begins circulating through the community
- General playerbase finds another plane that is particularly good, sometimes spam then ensues. This can also be triggered by addition of a new plane with potent weaponry, or a change to the armament(s) of an existing one.
- The same people whose intolerance started the cycle begin complaining about the new plane, starting the cycle anew.
After a while of seeing this shit happen over and over, I realized that the people who cry foul about the plane instead of adapting to it are the actual problem.
Then, I observed in the heated discussions often taking place, as well as through my own experience spading my way down tech trees, that as much as I dislike those “CAS whiners,” they do in fact have some good points. Notably, SPAAG prior to obtaining radars are woefully inadequate unless the pilots of enemy CAS are particularly stupid/greedy/both. Also, the fact that the best counter to CAS, fighter aircraft, are just as much dumb powerups as the CAS is, as well as some of the whiny folk complaining “why should I have to research another entire tech tree just to counter enemy CAS?!”
That is how I arrived at the following:
- Give all SPAAGs without radars, all Radar SPAAGs with their radars disabled/turned off, all Heavy AA-TDs (YaG-10 for example), and all SPHs with HE-VT shells short-range lead indicators that extend from 0km to 1.0-1.5km depending on crew training. Average players unfortunately will never learn how to use SPAAG “correctly,” thus this mechanic would help them know where to aim and by only being at short range, also teach them WHEN to open fire.
- Undoing many nerfs to SPAAGs’ anti-tank abilities across the board. Restoration of full APCR/APDS belts on ones with forced mixed belts, removal of idiotic shell shattering, a general global buff of APCR & first-gen APDS postpen, allowing any SPAAG to carry as much AP(FS)DS as they wish and can physically fit, and intentionally dropping their BRs across the board with the expectation that they can and will melt damn near any tank they encounter in side shots. Average players need convincing to move their SPAAGs to the front line with the tanks they’re defending, otherwise the above proposed lead markers will not help much. Thus, this change would make SPAAGs actually fun to play and also ensure most people will move them into appropriate position to then swat CAS if and when it shows up.
- A Naval-inspired default plane and default SPAAG/SAM forcibly added to every person’s lineup. This feature is partially being implemented to combat one-death-leaving, but currently only for 9.3+, unfortunately, and also for now just for SPAAGs as well as tanks. The idea here is to expand the “random SPAAG” to all BRs, and copy over Naval’s ideas for “random Fighter” and “random CAS” as well. Combined with the above buffs to SPAAGs, now anyone who wants to counter the CAS they claim to hate so much, can.
With working counters, now there is an unspoken ultimatum delivered to anyone trying to complain about CAS - “use the now buffed counters or shut the hell up already - we are done with your shit.”
In my eyes, the only time a CAS nerf is truly necessary is when all possible counters have been implemented and all of them unequivocably have failed to solve the problem. Or if it is a case of intentional blatant overperformance to ensure something sells well, like Ka-50s had with Vkhir missiles for years, or Mi-28s with DIRCM have now.
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It would fix so many damn things it’s not even funny. Late game armor monster heavy tanks would be able to drop to BRs where their armor would work better, because their historical opponents would now be able to pen them.
Case & point - the Maus. US 90mm M304, T44, M332, and M332A1 APCR shots should all have no issues penetrating and killing a Maus turret front with total ease, as the real rounds went through 310mm, 373mm, 390mm, and 425mm of flat steel, respectively, all with postpen equal to or better than 90mm solid AP.
Britain would rely mainly on 17-pdr APDS and the Charioteer with its 20pdr, which have historically correct penetration values but neutered to hell postpen.
I genuinely believe that the Maus could easily be 7.0 with its proper opponents un-nerfed to what they should be. Same with the IS-4M for that matter, its natural adversary.
With the above proposed APCR buff, long-barrel Panzer 3s would be more than sufficient to be 3.3-4.0.
The long-barrel Panzer 4s are in my eyes only slightly worse than the likes of long-barrel Shermans such as the Firefly and SA50. I would place the F2 at 4.0, the H at 4.3, and the G at 4.7. The J is functionally equivalent to the 3.3 M10 GMC and would sit there. All of those having APCR rounds that pen nearly 180mm and spall well would put them more in the range of usability that the Firefly and SA50 Shermans have.
And for reference I would also see things like the Pakwagen go up further still with the same buff, as its APCR would now pen 200mm and spall as well as an SA50’s upgraded APCBC shell. Most other German long 75s would see their BRs increase much the same, with perhaps the sole exceptions being glass cannons with limited mobility like the Marder III, Marder III H, and the Sd.Kfz. 251/22 “HalfPaK” (as I nickname that thing, others call it the “PaKTrack”).
Other infamous seal clubbers like the Panzer Sfl.1c, Sd.Kfz. 240/2 Puma, and KV-1C 756(r) would also go up considerably.
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