Here we go again...
General Feedback
The Rock VS Everthing
In general, I believe this update messed up more the general Rock Paper Scissors meta despite the intention to restore it.
MBTs = the Jack of All Trades, Master of Everything:
- Firepower: Have the best gun of their tier, with High Penetration, High Alpha and increased DPM (regardless of the nerf from PTS 1 - they are still increased compared to live server)
- Armor: Changes to Armor means their weakspot became much easier to hide - Most MBT’s weakness is usually their LFP, many more funky weakspot like turret rings are not longer penetrable even with the best APFSDS.
- Mobility: They don’t feel slow at all - in fact tanks like the ATDU of all things have top-notch 0-Max speed time at ~20 odd seconds which is absurd.
- View Range is right about the only weakness of this class yet they always fight in close range anyway in the first place, mitigating this weakness for the most part
LTs / Wheeled vehicles = The “worse” MBT
- Firepower: They lost ~5% DPM for basically no compensation. Why? They guns are usually worse than that of the MBTs of the same tier, and their main selling point *is* that DPM. With the increase of MBT DPM, its compounding on the shrinking gap between MBT and LT DPM. Considering the lack of armor of these tanks, I don’t see the rationale behind this change, on top of the mobility nerf it received.
- Armor: They never had any armor to speak of for the most part. PL-01 also is much less resistant to HEAT now, for some peculiar reason.
-
Mobility: This is the big one.
- In general, most wheeled TDs and LTs feel much slower than they are compared to live server.
- LTs seem to handle just as sluggish as the MBTs, while acceleration to max-speed felt inadequate considering how fast some of the MBTs can be now (looking at you, T-14).
- Turning radius also is not where I would expect agile wheeled vehicles or LTs to be.
- Wheeled vehicles have horrible acceleration to their max speed despite their theoretical top speed; They never even get close to that even on hard terrain. This isn’t a realistic game and I thought the nerf to their mobility (Vehicles like the SPHINX and the Korent-EM) feels superficial and unnecessary. They just feel extremely unnatural to control compared to live because it feels so much slower and clunky.
- Having (finally) the disparity in view range is very nice, but I don’t think its enough to justify playing this class over other tanks (especially MBTs).
ATGM chip damage
- I am sure this has been stated many many times, but I genuinely think this is a toxic mechanic for PvE. T-15 and Bradleys dish out so many missiles in short succession that chipping damage alone can deal a lot of damage to you. despite using your armor correctly.
- Yes - I know that in PTS stage 2, ATGM are not supposed to do much chipping damage to heavily armored parts anymore, but this feels extremely inconsistent. I regularly still take 200-400 damage when T-15s/Bradleys shoot at my thickest frontal armor. You take cumulatively so much more unnecessary damage that you have to rebuild kit much more frequently in many games.
- ATGMs already have a global increase to their penetration for the most part. I don’t see why there is a need to give them even more power.
- It's not a fun mechanic and I strongly urge it to be scrapped.
Removal of HEAT / ATGM’s Damage bonus
- I understand the intention here is to lessen the RNG of HEAT (and ATGMs) in general, but the consequence of that is the loss of that High-risk, High reward mechanic, and the differentiation of a good player firing at weakspot vs a less-skilled player auto-aiming their missiles.
- Now, firing at weak engine decks, or parts without ERA protections are meaningless as they won’t award you extra damage for the extra effort you put in to aim those missiles.
Reworked Armor felt bland
- MBT’s armor in general now feels extremely bland and uninteresting. For the most part, just shoot APFSDS at the lower plate of any MBT and you’ll penetrate it.
- Previously, there are some fun little quirks to many tanks’ armor that you can fire a variety of rounds to your own risk. There are tiny weakspots on tanks that HEAT can penetrate and subsequently do more damage than APFSDS (e.g. Turing ring of XM1A3, Driver’s hatch on the T-14) - but the tradeoff is that you do no damage at all. That is now completely gone.
- It discourages ammo diversity and in general makes each engagement uninspiring, as the best tactic for the most part now is to face hug each other so that the enemy cannot shoot at your lower plate. It makes tanks like the XM1A3 incredibly strong because of the removal of most of its weakspot.
Tank-Specific Feedback
SPHINX
-
Its missile is way too weak compare to the CRAB (which is a Tier 9), which now has better per-missile reload AND 2 more missile to play with
-
14 second Missile reload and increased intra-missile reload, and very low Alpha damage for ATGM at 750 makes is way too weak for Tier 10 standards
-
Camo-rating falls to near-Zero when firing a missile, pushing it towards a pure scout.
-
-
Autocannon upgrade is inadequate to make up the difference between the missiles
-
It feels like a downgrade compare to the CRAB
Suggestion:
Swap its positioning with the Shadow, which makes more sense to be positioned as a pure scout, and instead make the SPHINX the AFV/TD hybrid (according to the graph in the portal article)
Give (partially) some of its ATGM power back by either decreasing the reload time on the missiles or increasing the damage of the missiles.
Challenger 2 ATDU
-
As of right now, it is a kind of MBT Wilk kind of PISH spamming TD rather than the heavily armored MBT that they should be as outlined.
-
The frontal LFP weakspot remain enlarged compare to live for no apparent reason - It was always supposed to be hard to deal with at the front - its now much less consistent in doing the tanking (and possibly affecting how it reacts to ATGM chipping damage too).
-
Its side Dorchester blocks are completely destroyed, becoming basic spaced armor. I cannot agree with this change on top of the LFP nerf. Its effectiveness against HEAT are a little bit worse than it is on live (~1000mm effective - a lot of Tier 10 ATG can, and will chew through that), while completely useless against any kind of kinetic rounds (~350mm effective when you don't angle it, and ~600mm with a heavy angle, WTF is this "Dorchester block"?).
-
Don’t understand why the insistence of making the ATDU less armored considering it is contradictory to what its positioning in the rebalance. I strongly urge the developers to either give it back the composite armor blocks, or at the very least make it some kind of NERA blocks.
-
It’s absurdly fast and agile for a supposedly heavily armored tank.
Suggestion:
Option 1 - The Solo Warrior: Retain the current frontal armor profile, but give it back the Dorchester armor blocks on the side. This would make over-angling the tank possible again to compensate for the LFP nerf. Keep the mobility as is in order to allow it to adjust its angling quickly in accordance to the engagement, making it a very tough lone warrior that can hold the line for extended periods of time while being not completely unkillable from the front.
Option 2 - The Doom Turtle: Give its Live server frontal armor profile back, but keep the side armor as of PTS Stage 2 to allow for easy flanking. Adjust its mobility downwards in order to make this a frontline doom turtle that would tank extremely well, but prone to flanking and thus require ally support.
Abrams Family
-
Contrary to the complete disaster that it is in PTS stage 1, in PTS stage 2 the entire Abrams family has now become the “new” doom turtle with only a small weakspot while the entire front is basically impenetrable.
-
Take the XM1A3 as an example: As of PTS stage 2, there is only a tiny strip of “Lower” LFP that is penetrable by even the DM23 (900mm APFSDS penetration). This is way too overboard now even compared to even the Obj 490 and ATDU.
-
Considering its extremely powerful ERA on the sides that protect against both APFSDS and HEAT ammo, on top of the removal of turret ring weakspot, it is extremely tough to kill one in any angle bar its back.
Suggestion:
Give the Abrams its turret ring weakness back in a similar fashion to the Lepoard 2AX - instead of the entire turret ring, the section under the cannon would become the weakspot.
This makes sure that it is not completely invulnerable when face-hugging, while not being as obnoxious to hide (point your cannon downwards to cover it up) as it is on live server.
T-72. T-80, T-90, Object 640 and other T-series derivatives (Excluding T-14 family)
-
As of right now, many T-series tank already have a relatively small LFP portion compared to Western tanks (like the Abrams or the Lelclerc); With the new changes It has the Abrams armor problem but even more pronounced across the whole line.
-
Right now on PTS, that tiny strip of LFP is further divided into a upper portion that is almost as strong as the UFP and a very very tiny strip that serves as a weakspot in the “lower” LFP. This makes them extremely powerful against even higher tier vehicles because its very difficult to hit it even at sub-100m range.
-
Those “Lower” LFP weakspot are still extremely strong, and especially to HEAT rounds. The T90MS as of right now is resistant up to ~1200mm penetration ATGMs, which is absolutely ridiculous and is superior to the T-14 in terms of armor, which is absurd.
Suggestion:
Weaken the LFP to make it at least penetrable to top ATGMs of its tier, and APFSDS should have no issues going through it. T-series LFP (except the T-14 family) are already very small to begin with.
K2 and Type 10
K2
-
Is effectively the new Type 10
-
Insane burst damage (2K-3K damage within 4 seconds) potential while retaining above average DPM
-
Resistant to APFSDS from the front (abeit not as good against HEAT)
Type 10
-
Seems a little over-nerfed with both DPM and DPS nerf
-
Its armor was never that great to begin with, and it was the gun and the mobility that kept it afloat.
Suggestion:
K2: Keep its burst potential as is, but nerf its overall DPM to differentiate it from the Type 10. Adjust its armor profile to make it less resistant to kinetic rounds.
Type 10: Increase its DPM by a bit (not to Live server level but partially), but keep the DPS value as is (as in, keep the intra-shot reload nerf as of PTS stage 2) to differentiate it from the K2.
-
As a result, while the Type 10 does not have the DPS potential like it is right now in Live server, it retains its excellent DPM and will be great for extended engagements (and in PvE);
-
K2 will now do more burst damage than the Type 10, but does not compete with it in consistent damage, resembling a hit-and-run play style that suits more to PvP but still viable in PvE.