Early on in our evaluation of Artillery for Balance 2.0 we made the hard decision to remove the class in its current form. The ability to deal indirect damage to an opponent who can neither see or retaliate was a mechanic that just didn’t work well with the rest of Armored Warfare. Even with our successful efforts to reduce the impact Artillery had on the battlefield, it never completely took away the frustration players had with it. Not only was it difficult to balance around, but it had real impacts on our ability to create maps as well. Each map we made, whether in PvP or PvE, had to take into account Arty firing lines. We couldn’t have complex cover or tall mountains and buildings because Artillery wasn’t able to shoot over them. With only a very small percentage of our active playerbase playing Artillery, this made it even harder to justify keeping the class.
Because of these factors, we had a choice; remove Artillery altogether, restrict the class to just PvE or offer the vehicles in a reimagined class form. We decided to go with the third option and have condensed both artillery lines into a single Self Propelled Gun line which offers high damage at the cost of longer aim times and slightly higher reloads. SPG vehicles now have drastically increased mobility to match their real-world capabilities and their Artillery-view has been replaced with a standard zoom reticle. They do retain access to smoke shells, but the illumination support shells have been removed for now. Because of how different the class now plays, we aren’t committing 100% to it sticking around, but we’d like to get player opinions on the changes during the Update 0.19 PTS cycle before deciding whether to keep it or remove the class with the official release of Balance 2.0.
Source: Official Portal
