I was thinking about the ammo changes on the sandbox and wanted to explain why I think they don't fix the issues wg has identified and will make the game worse. First, the premium ammo reworks. Obviously something should be done about premium ammo. The way the game is played right now, premium ammo is way to prolific in randoms and cw. This has created a problem where only tanks with nutty armor can rely on their armor. Super conq, chieftan's, 279e ect. Tanks with above average armor for their class, like e5's, 277's and 113's have functionally no armor. People run so much premium ammo because of tanks like the sconq that they don't care about dabbing the 2 key to go straight through the strongest part of these other heavy tanks.
It also creates a problem where tanks without unbelievable armor feel like tanks with average armor. Try driving an e100, is7 or type 5 these days and tell me they don't feel weaker than even t110e5's back in the day. The old tanks that are supposed to have strong armor are not balanced around players slinging half gold shells. This means wg has introduced tanks balanced around gold spam like the sconq, and 279e's, which only makes those other tanks weaker and incentivize's more people to run gold.
Why the current changes don't solve the problem:
Reducing the damage of premium ammo does not mean people will use less of it. It means they will need to run more. If I want to play my e5 in tier 10 battles I need to have at least enough premium ammo to kill a 279e or I risk throwing the game before it even starts. It also doesn't make me any less willing to shoot e100's with gold, because the 50/50 I don't penetrate is always worse odds than the 100% chance i do penetrate and only do 80% damage. This creates a problem where heavies that get penetrated by gold rounds will feel marginally stronger, but tanks that can bounce gold rounds will become infinitely stronger.
For arguments sake lets use an example:
Say premium rounds do 30% less damage than standard shells, e100's get ~40% buff to health, but that's it, because tier 10 premium rounds are basically guaranteed to penetrate an e100. Now, the 279e gets that same 40% buff to health, except they can bounce premium rounds consistently because they have no weakspot on their turret. Assuming that they bounce half the premium rounds that hit them (which seems like a conservative estimate), that means that the 40% buff to health translates to 80% more "effective health" which is the sum of your actual HP and the potential damage received. This change benefits the tanks with unbalanced armor much more than tanks with just above average armor.
So what should be done?
It seems like best solution to the problem is to just introduce a cap to how many premium rounds a tank can run. It would still allow tanks to compete with the sconq's and 279e's but forces players to decide whether or not they should throw them into the e100 or instead save them for more dangerous tanks. This fix would probably need to come with a full re-balance of certain tanks to give them frontal weakspots. As capping ammo may cause the nutty tanks to be even more nutty, but its much better than the current fix, which makes health the balancing factor rather than armor.
TL;DR: premium ammo changes don't help heavy tanks so much as making unbalanced tanks even better
I'm interested to hear other's take on these changes. I have more thoughts on the HE rework, but this post was long af so I might make it later if people are interested.
