Tank combat makes for great gameplay. To me, part of its charm is that it's high-stakes and volatile.
Before the HP buff, the lower tiers were a great place to scratch that itch when I wanted some tense action. With relatively few precious hitpoints, you had to really be on your A-game. Face too many enemies, get caught out by arty or a TD or a KV-2 and it's back to the garage for you.
These days, disappointingly, the combat feels very same-y to most of the other shooter games out there: bullet sponges shooting at each other a lot and then dying after a while. Brawling in a heavy begins to feel like a grindy chore when you know you have to penetrate half a dozen times to kill that other heavy you're facing off with. Add to that a gun that can only penetrate the cupola, has a long reload, and misses much of the time only because of RNG, and combat seems to drag on too long.
There are a lot of complaints about the hull-down meta but being hull-down simply makes sense for a tank. I think an HP reduction would make the gameplay more thrilling. If you're shooting at the cupola with a low chance of hitting, it becomes more interesting if you only have to hit once or twice to knock that tank out. Dancing and angling your armor is more exciting when any shot might be your last as opposed to knowing you can take at least a few more shots before dying.
TL;DR:
The lower HP pools of the pre-buff lower tiers made for exciting gameplay. After the buff combat has begun to feel more tedious and generic. I'm wondering if anyone else feels this way?
