Supertest 1.5.1: Medium Tank Rebalance
4 min readUpdate 1.5 will soon come to World of Tanks servers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know what Wargaming already has planned for Update 1.5.1. It comes with no surprise that the next update will be a major rebalance update. It seems that Wargaming decided to start announcing information about it and the first vehicles to receive changes will be Tier X medium tanks.
Note, these rebalanced vehicles are currently in Supertest. The changes listed in the following article are not final and are subject to change. This will be an ongoing process and of course, Wargaming has to experiment with values at Supertest, but hopefully, they will be able to come to an optimal balance. Let’s take a look into what vehicles will receive changes and Wargaming thoughts on them.
The STB-1 and Its Branch
The STB-1 is a versatile, fast-accelerating vehicle with a well-sloped turret and good gun depression angles. This vehicle is ideal for mid-to-close combat, and it’s designed to constantly deal damage. The STB-1 commonly plays the role of an active aggressor on the front line, or of an effective support vehicle – the latter is how this vehicle was initially conceived. Its DPM is very impressive and is one of the best in World of Tanks, while its gun stabilization leaves much to be desired. So it’s time to make it more competitive and add some new touches to its profile!
Finally, we are looking to equip the STB-1 with a commonly requested game feature: hydropneumatic suspension — just like the one available with the top-tier Swedish medium tanks. We will thoroughly test this feature, and if we are satisfied with the test results, we will definitely equip this vehicle with it.
In addition, we’re going to rebalance the performance of some other vehicles in the Japanese Tech Tree, especially those sitting at Tier VIII, the STA-1 and the STA-2. The DPM of the STA-1 will increase, making it more competitive.
We also carefully analyzed your feedback regarding the STA-2 and its gameplay and realized this mobile tank could be even more effective, so we will also slightly improve some of its key characteristics. We will unveil the detailed changes of this Premium machine a bit later, after finalizing the settings of other vehicles.
The Leopard 1
We consider the Leopard 1 as a long-distance sniper — fast and manoeuvrable. First of all, we will increase its alpha damage from 390 to 420, as well as armour penetration. We will also change the type of standard shells for this tank. By default, it will fire armour-piercing shells, and their velocity will become one of the highest in the game.
The Leopard 1 will be enhanced as a sniper and will be able to hit enemies more effectively at long range, thanks to increased accuracy and decreased aiming time. Also, its forward speed will increase by 5 km/h to 70 km/h, making the Leopard 1 the fastest Tier X medium tank in the game!
Due to such a serious improvement in its characteristics, we will have to reduce some other parameters which have less impact on its battle role. In particular, we’re reducing:
- Reverse speed by 3 km/h, to 20 km/h
- HP pool by 100 points, to 1850 points
- Power-to-weight ratio
However, after the rebalance, the Leopard 1 will still retain excellent mobility.
We also want to properly reconfigure the entire branch and check the effects of our changes on the researchable vehicles. Only then will we proceed to rebalance Premium Tier VIII tanks. So, the characteristics of the Pz. 58 Mutz will certainly be changed, but only after rebalancing the entire branch.
The AMX 30 B
The main change we’ve prepared for this tank is increased armour penetration with standard and special shells. At the same time, the alpha damage of the AMX 30 B will remain average.
When rebalancing the characteristics of this vehicle, we constantly kept in mind that it had no distinct playing role. The AMX 30 B is a universal second line support vehicle, which can perform equally well in a variety of game situations. However, it lacks accuracy and armor penetration when playing at long distances, so we decided to improve these characteristics. It’s the most universal choice as it performs better than the Leopard 1 at close quarters and better than the STB-1 at long range.
Object 430 and Object 430U
These formidable vehicles have demonstrated good effectiveness since their introduction in World of Tanks, so we didn’t rush to change their characteristics. They were also not very common in Random Battles, and their number didn’t affect the game balance.
However, the number of these two tanks has increased in the last six months, as well as your feedback regarding their combat performance. Therefore, we decided to reduce some of their excessively high combat parameters.
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haha and someone argued not so long ago how 430u is not so good, even wg admits it and its first med receiving nerf in ages
Klaus pointed out that in the case of the Leopard at least the replacement of the HEAT round as the special shell with APCR is going to effect its new role as a long range sniper. APCR loses more effectiveness over range more quickly than any other shell type meaning you will simply bounce APCR over very long ranges instead of missing occasionally but actually doing some damage when you hit with HEAT (which seems to be becoming a more and more exclusively Russian shell type) Yee Haa
Absolutely not true. Long range ability for the Leo 1 is not limited by penetration. It is limited by the ability to hit weakspots or lead moving targets at long ranges.
Factor in the faster shell speed and flatter trajectory as well as normalisation and the ability to go through spaced armour and you will find it’s effectiveness is much higher than previously.
The biggest problem for the Leo however is 2 things. 1 map design. Everything is a 3 lane corridor brawl. 2. Accuracy is a completely irrelevant stat due to RNG.
Until they fix these 2 things the Leo will never be as conpe***ive as the Russian meds for example. The way around that is by increasing alpha or DPM or both. But the problem with that soon becomes that increasing these stats can make a tank overly powerful for randoms while still being average in a compe***ive environment. With these current changes the Leo will still perform under average but better than before.
Well I must WG has cancelled all the nerfs to 430 and 430U. They posted the news on their Russian website.
E50M??????????
To kill stb1 is out of memory and it’s hard to see it in the game
330 heat penetration can go through lots of tanks frontally without really aim. And heavily armoured target which you need to load premium to fight against usually is slow, so you don’t need a decent shell velocity to hit your shots even over a very long distance. And how many tanks have a huge area of spaced armour?
The more penetration you have, the less aim and accuracy you need. As you said, accuracy is nothing since rng sometimes enjoys messing around. Penetration is the only thing we can rely on. Hypothetically, if you have 100000mm penetration, as long as you hit your shots, it’s gonna be a penetration. 315 mm penetration apcr shell will lose penetration down to 300mm penetration over 500m, that’s when you really struggle penetrating things. 260ish mm Apcr with 330ish mm heat it’s the best combination, no doubt.
You are completely wrong havoc