I am creating this post for all those people out there who want artillery removed for the reasons listed below (there is a buildup):
1) The unchanged main purpose
Back when it was first introduced, the matchmaking was set up so that tier 3 tanks could see tier 10 tanks. The arty was added so that the low tier artillery could damage the high tier artillery without any difficulty. Tanks like the M44 were added so that Maus's could be stopped before entering the base. After a long time, the matchmaking was fixed to only three tiers, without any change to arty whatsoever. M44s could clean the floor with any tank they wished, which keep in mind the M44 was originally added to damage and challenge the high-tier tanks, like the IS-7.
2) The Stun Mechanic
Wargamming tried to nerf artillery by removing damage but adding stun (patch 0.9.8, released April 4, 2017). Many players say that this ended up being more of a buff than an actual nerf. It achieved the goal of arty doing less damage, but arty now help their teammates more by stunning the enemy crew, decreasing all stats by a moderate amount. This is extremely irritating, now that arty has now two roles: kill enemies and disabling enemies if you can't kill them.
3) Player attendance
On April 3rd, 2017, roughly 203K players were playing world of tanks. 2 weeks later on April 17, 2017, there was a small peak that rose to roughly 205K players. The player base has not been that high since. As of me creating this post, the highest peak on December 7, 2020 was roughly 158K players. This is not a result of natural game uninterest (I am going to call it NGU for short). On April 3rd, 2016, the player attendance 224K players and the following Christmas peak was 238K players, rising above that date. Present-day World of Tanks fails to meet the April 17th, 2017 small peak, including Christmas of that same year (196K). I highly doubt that WoT would fail this test based purely on NGU.
The player attendance statistics are not official, but they are rough estimates., and the rough estimates are skewed enough to still make my point valid.
I cannot say what player attendance changes have happened since the addition of arty itself, as it is impossible to find out what day arty was added. The furthest back the patch updates go is the addition of the Pershing, Panther II, and T-54 in patch .
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4) Not fulfilling it's purpose
Many arty would penetrate tanks and cause massive damage to them, most of the time removing all of their health in 1 hit. This is part of the reason the stun was added. However, artillery are still 1-shotting tanks today, including the stun mechanic! American artillery are most notable for doing this, alongside German artillery. People will argue that it only applies to open top vehicles, or the rear of a vehicle. However, this is not entirely the case. The effective armor of the engine deck, which is fairly large for all tanks, of the IS/IS-2 is 37mm if an artillery shell were to hit it at a 38 effective degree angle, which is about the shell arc of an artillery shell, perhaps a . The M12, the American Artillery of the same tier, has an average of 39mm of penetration, enough to penetrate a heavy tank its own tier. When the stun mechanic was added so that artillery would not penetrate as much, it failed massively.
Thank you for reading this if you have read this far. Here is a link to the IS 3D model if you are interested looking at the IS hull for yourself
