Original post by: Tupinambis(here)
I should have written this a while ago, but whatever nobody is paying me.
So, the Japanese heavies are coming in 9.10 and currently the supertest build of the game has been datamined in gamemodels3d.
KEEP IN MIND THAT THESE PERTAINS TO THE SUPERTEST SERVER AND ALL OF THIS IS LIABLE TO CHANGE
Anyway I was thumbing through the Japanese heavy stats [because I have nothing better to do… other than work on the edTPA…] and there are a few interesting things that stuck out at me, mostly good, some bad.
Lets begin!
Tier 2 Type 89 I-Go
Its a tier 2, who cares?
Basically type a Type 95 Ha-Go, make it super slow, and give it stupid-high ROF.
Tier 3 Type 91 heavy.
Our first tier 3 heavy tank!!!!
What is it like? Take the Type 97 Chi-Ha, make it a bit slower, and give it a higher ROF. Also make it fatter.
…that’s just about it. only 20mm of armor that’s actually thinner than the Type 97, though it won’t make much of a difference since 25mm will almost never stop anything ever anyway.
That being said, the overall firepower is actually extremely good for a tier 3 vehicle. 81 standard pen and 27.27 ROF [compared to 20 on the Chi-Ha]
Tier 4 Type 95 heavy
This is the first bit of really bad news. This thing looks horrendous. Imagine someone took the French Char B1… reduced the armor in half… and that’s about it. Only protected by 35mm of armor, its big, and it has a 75mm gun with 70 pen.
That’s right, this thing has worse firepower than the tier 3 that preceeded it. Granted the alpha damage with the 75mm gun is good and the ROF is decent [17.65].
Still, its a big paper tank with a very questionable gun. At least the B1 could take a few punches.
Don’t expect you to goldspam your way to victory either, 100-pen HEAT shells with really questionable gun handling isn’t exactly a war-winner.
Type 5 O-I Experimental
Here’s where things get really entertaining. All of the Japanese heavies from this point on are absolute titans, though this is both a good and a bad thing.
Its closest rival is probably the KV-1, and I’ll use that as a reference.
The KV-1 does have overall better armor, the O-I E has 75/70/70 hull and 75 all around on the turret [the KV-1’s turret is notably better].
The KV-1 does have the infamous shell-eating tracks, though the O-I E does have a roughly similar layout on the side. The upper portion of the side armor is just a flat 70mm and it won’t be too difficult to engage. The lower part with the tracks though is 35mm of hull armor behind 40mm of track armor behind another 35mm of spaced armor. The distances involved here will make this portion basically immune to any kind of HEAT or HE ammo.
The good news *almost* ends there for the KV-1 though. The O-I E actually has a better P/W ratio than the KV-1 by about 20% and better terrain resistance values… and a higher speed limit [40]… and better traverse.
It also has a magnificent 105mm gun with 130mm of standard pen and 300 alpha damage. Its DPM is roughly tied with the KV-1 and T1 heavy. It aims faster than the KV-1’s 85 [2.5 aim time] and has better bloom values while moving [0.2].
Sounds stupid and OP right? Well maybe not.
The hull and turret roof profile on the O-I E is some of the worst arty-bait I’ve ever seen short of a WT E-100. Extremely huge, extremely flat, 30mm thick. The O-I E’s main arch-nemesis at tier 5 is probably going to end up being…. THE BISHOP!!!!. Its top-down Javelin missile strike shell are going to make O-I E drivers very mad, very fast. Super-Heavy spall liners will not help in this situation.
We’ll see if this ends up being enough counter the O-I E’s otherwise near-total superiority over the KV-1.
Tier 6 O-I
I’ve covered this vehicle in another thread. Basically take a KV-2, give it better AP ammo, a decent HEAT shell, DOUBLE the front hull armor, give it vastly better bloom values, make it more accurate, a better aim time… and then make it huge….
Will this be a problem for game balance? Maybe, maybe not. It will be hilarious 1-shotting Churchill III’s and KV-220’s. It shares the same main problem with its predicessor though, the top armor profile is incredibly bad. FV304’s are going to figure into your future in a very big, and a very bad, way.
Tier 7 O-Ni
I can’t help but escape the suspicion that the name “O-Ni” is fake, but whatever.
This thing is a very weird beast. Its armor profile is 175/70/150
You read that right, its @ss has literally more than double the armor that its side does, and this thing is very big and very long.
Turret is more normal at 200/150/150
The side armor is a big bummer, but the good news is that this thing has absolutely no weakspots on the front of any kind. 175mm is as thin as the front armor gets. The turret cupola is small and is 150mm thick. Not great, but given how gigantic this vehicle is most tanks will have one Hell of a time trying to shoot it.
There is one serious exploitable weakness for its front though, the hull roof near the boob turrets is 30mm thick. If you get very close and shoot down at it with a 90+mm gun, you’ll score triple-overmatch. Granted, this tactic involves you getting really close to a gigantic tank that might crush you.
The gun is a 105mm gun with 190 pen, 330 alpha damage… and that’s about all there is to say about it. It gets a special AP shell that offers only a very small increase in penetration [215]. The ROF is only 5, giving it some pretty underwhelming DPM. Bloom values aren’t great, 3.3 aim time.
Blah.
For such a gigantic vehicle its firepower is actually rather underwhelming. This is rather unusual for a line of vehicles that mostly have excellent firepower. Not all though, which brings us to tier 8:
Tier 8 O-Ho
I love this thing’s name. Every time I kill something with it I’m going to should “Oh-Ho!!!” like I’m sneezing or I just got punched in the face.
The thing’s armor is a rather notable improvement from the previous vehicle. 105mm side armor at its thinnest, the portion covered by the track has about 140mm of crap for your shell to try sailing through. Absolutely impenetrable for HEAT except in the upper portions. The front hull is 200mm thick, and there are no points on the armor that have anything less than 200mm LOS thickness. The big sloped shelf is 105mm thick, but it is at a 70 degree angle and produces over 300mm LOS thickness. The miniturrets are also 200mm thick and are going to be a sore disappointment to people expecting a KV-5 esque weakspot.
…actually that is true of all the giant Japanese super-heavies with miniturrets. None of them are actual weakspots…except that the armor on them is completely flat. Still, they’re not thinly armored.
The cupola is 200mm thick, don’t even bother trying to shoot it.
The BAD news with this vehicle is that it has the exact same gun as the previous vehicle, the 105mm gun, only the special premium AP on the last one is now the standard AP on this one [215 pen] and there is NO premium shell of any kind. On the plus side the ROF was increased significantly, 6.45ROF giving it the best DPM of all non-premium tier 8 heavies…. actually maybe the best DPM of all tier 8 heavies in general. Too lazy to check the IS-6. Unfortunately the aim time, gun bloom, and accuracy is still pretty lousy. Also, strangely, this vehicle gets only -5 gun depression while all the others starting at tier 5 get -10. This is probably a bug though.
Again, a vehicle with somewhat disappointing firepower given its absolutely enormous size and weight. The DPM will shred anyone who tries to rush and hug you though.
Tier 9 Type 4.
This is possibly the highlight of the entire Japanese heavy tree. Giant size, giant armor, giant gun that makes your enemies feel buttsad.
When facing this vehicle head-on there is no point in its armor that is vulnerable to any guns with less than 250 pen [except for *tiny* portions weak to 240 pen…]
The turret cupola is 200mm thick but has its own slope, never mind the fact that you’d have to shoot UP at it. I wouldn’t even bother trying. The hull slope is 150mm thick but is at a 75 degree angle and is, for all intents and purposes, impenetrable.
Hull shoulders are only 200mm thick, but are sloped back to offer more than 300mm LOS thickness head on [though this decreases dramatically if you try angling].
Hull side is 140mm thick, 190 if you hit the tracks. The distance between the side spaced armor and the actual hull is a billion miles wide and HEAT will never go through it [though, again, the upper sides are still vulnerable].
Also worth noting as that the hull roof is 50mm thick, unless you have a 150mm gun you can’t do the triple-overmatch trick on this thing.
Possibly best of all is the giganto 140mm gun, with 249 standard pen and 600 damage. The only tier 9 vehicle in the game that might beat you at the peek-a-boom game is the T30.
Gun fires at 2.88RPM, giving it some rather underwhelming DPM, but that’s what you get for a 600-alpha shot at tier 9 with good pen and front armor that’s practically invulnerable to standard ammo from other tier 9 heavies and mediums. Accuracy is quite bad at 0.42, but who cares. Gun bloom is average and the aim time is a bearable 2.9 seconds.
With the possible exception of the tier 6 vehicle, this will probably be the most entertaining vehicle of the whole line. That is until HEAT starts getting flung at you….
Tier 10 Type 5
It must be said that, in its current form, the tier X heavy actually looks rather underwhelming. The front and turret armor is completely identical to the Type 4 only its 10mm thicker. Side armor is the same.
On the plus side it has better HP/Ton and the terrain resistance is considerably better. Also a giant 2800 hitpoint pool. ROF, accuracy, aim time are all improved by a notable margin from the tier 9 vehicle.
Unfortunately, this still leaves it with some extremely underwhelming DPM for a tier 10 vehicle [barely over 2K]. Aim time at 2.5 is.. not good. 0.4 accuracy isn’t very good for a tier 10. Weirdly, its gun bloom while moving is actually worse than the Type 4 [0.24 vs 0.22].
This is all very troubling for 2 main issues:
1. You go from 72 to 120 MM weight points. That means that the MM considers one Type 5 to be worth almost two Type 4’s… and the increase in armor and firepower soft stats don’t really justify that kind of increase, and
2. Currently in 9.10 the Maus is getting buffed. Only small buffs, but enough to clearly outpace the Type 5 in nearly every possible category except alpha strike.
The Maus is getting its aim time and gun bloom during turret rotation buffed. Again, not much, but in a comparison between the two the Maus has:
1. Much more effective armor layout.
2. Much better accuracy, aim time, and overall gun handling
3. The Maus is actually MORE mobile.
4. Moar hitpoints
5. Much better premium munition.
In turn, the Type 5 gets
1. Marginally better DPM
2. Better alpha strike.
The armor is a particularly important sticking issue. The Type 5’s armor, while very thick, is also very flat and poorly laid out, so that it will be absolutely screwed once just about anything in tiers 9 and 10 locate the magical 2 button. The turret armor is nice and thick but its formed in the just the wrong way so you can’t really angle it between shots like you can with the Maus. It doesn’t have the rear turret or the side armor of the Maus for good side-scraping. It has those stupid shoulders so you can’t really angle your armor at all really.
Right now the Type 5 looks like it could use a nice DPM buff to just run in and crushify everything.
So what’s the conclusion about Japanese heavies?
1. The tier 7 and 10 vehicles look really questionable
2. The tier 4 vehicle looks awful
3. The tier 6 and 9 vehicles look awesome
and most improbably
ALL OF THESE VEHICLES ARE COMING AT AN EXTREMELY BAD TIME WHEN WG IS TESTING NERFS FOR PREMIUM AMMO AND REBALANCING FOR SPG’S.
This is extremely important since these vehicles will probably be more negatively effected by enemy gold spam and SPG’s than any other group of vehicles in the entire game…. except gold-spamming SPG’s.
They sit in a similar weird place as the Mauschen, in that most of them have extremely marginal premium ammo or simply don’t have premium ammo at all [the tier 8], so a premium ammo nerf would be of almost no consequence to them directly but would be immensely helpful to their own survivability. Likewise all of these vehicles are extremely susceptible to SPG fire and their overall effectiveness can be changed dramatically by even small adjustments to SPG’s.
Its impossible to say how these vehicles will do in the long run, not least of all because this is still the supertest phase and a lot can change. I really wish WG would actually come to a decision about SPG’s and premium ammo sooner rather than later, because all of these things may end up being awful today and then instantly become OP monsters later on.
