Lightning’s Early Review: The STRV K

Hello there,

I'm back after a break to review this new, controversial tier 9 tank: the STRV K is the first premium tier 9 tank in the game after 10 years of WoT, but this is not a new thing for wargaming. WoWs has tier 9 premium tanks since a long time, and remember the tanks you have now are reward tanks, they simply allow free crew movement, earn more F.Exp and more Crew Exp, they do nothing about the economy of the tank itself. Also the tank seems to have the ability to earn bonds, how much bonds is unknown to me at the moment of this writing.

Before going on a riot against WG, let's see if the tank is any good.

I compared this tank to other 2 hull down tank sporting -10 gun depression: the AE Phase I and the Conqueror.

https://tanks.gg/compare/ae-phase-i?t=conqueror%7Estrv-k

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Gun and Gun handling:

DPM is the lowest of the group, with only 2035 dpm, it's at least 200 dpm inferior than the others, standard penetration is ok, similar to the others but when we arrive at the gold penetration is really bad news for our STRV K, with only 310 apcr, while conqueror has 326 and the phase I 340 heats.

Because of the ammo on this tank even spamming gold wont work, you need to aim and aim good, and if you see heavly armored tanks in front of you, run, they'll out trade you (more about armor later)

Gun handling seems fine with 0.33 but the issue is in the hidden stats, 0.18 while moving and 0.14 when turning the turret, combined with a not so fine aim time of 2.40 means while you work that ridgeline, you gun will bloom, you need to hit those cupolas, so you need to aim for like 4 seconds to close the circle enough. And the turret wont hold.

On top of that, what's the point of APCR that travels 1350 m/s if you cannot hit that running light/fast medium tank because when you track the gun blooms?

Armour and Survivability:

HP pool wise the STRV K is fine-ish with 1850, it's not the 1950 of the Conqueror but it's fine number. The problem arise when you see the armor profile: the turret is stated as 254/88.9/88 which is the same values of the Conqueror, but contrary to the conqueror the turret is very flat, and if you go on the model viewer even with normal shells you have big happy green island of penetration in your face.

Hull armor is only 90 on the front, but it's very angled and reach something like 250 effective or auto ricochet if angled a bit. Remember that 90mm base can be overmatched easly.

Mobility:

This tank can reach on the paper 40km/h and has the same power to weight ratio of the Phase I, the problem are the ground resistences, which are drammatically the worst of the comparison. This tank will have a hard time going up the ridge line or let's say up the hill of himmelsdorf. Thankfully you have 18km/h backward so you can retreat faster once you peaked and the grille opened you a third eye in the face.

So in my mind this is a tank that peak a ridgeline, get penetrated in the face while aims, shoot at the weak spot, but lacks dpm to outtrade the opponent.

Personal final opinion.

Is this tank good? No, it's a single shooter hull down tank with low dpm and no turret armor, you have to play this tank in second line, almost as a sniper or hiding behind someone with armor to absorb the shots. You want to play the king of the tier 9 hulldown? Get a conqueror. CBA to farm for the line? Ok get the phase I with the battlepass coins. Do you have 80 euro to spend on this? Because yes, if this tank follow the pricing of wows ships it's going to be 80 euro.

It doesn't have either alpha or dpm to perform effective trades, it doesn't have an auto loader or auto reloader, the gold is bad, the turret is unreliable.

Do you know what's the purpose of this tank? Testing the water with tier 9 premiums in WoT, WG is sending us a bad tier 9 premium that wont change anything in tier 9 MM with KPZ 50T or Concept 1B, they want to see how much drama and money it will generate, and in case everything goes smooth they have already in the pocket the real russian bias tank with armor of stalinium and autoloader: OBJ 752, which tanks.gg and supertest mark with the golden icon, unknown if it's going to be premium or reward.

I for one will not buy this tank, first because I don't care about the swedish heavy line, second I think the tank is bad, third the tank is going to be very costly and fourth if i need money I play STRV s1 or 122 tm (tanks with high standard base pen) that even if they lose they make 100k per game and go farm bond with my Tier Xs

Let me know your opinions, and let WG also know your opinions (in a civil manner)

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Lightning