To my surprise, 1.23 CT went up today. As expected from the holiday patch, the content outside of Holiday Ops is very limited – the only new testable content is random events: https://worldoftanks.eu/en/news/updates/1-23-CT1/. There's a possibility that the 2nd iteration will bring more changes, but I wouldn't count on it. Holiday patches usually tend to be very dry on actual new content, as they heavily focus on Holiday Ops event.

However, what is interesting is a significant list of changes to various supertest tanks as well as the addition of A LOT of new tanks. I will go through each of them (though mostly the tier 8-10 stuff, others will be looked through quicker), starting with changes to existing tanks – Tiger-Maus, Type 63, Obj 752 and Obj 590.

Tiger-Maus

Tiger-Maus genuinely seemed like a powerful tank, especially by tier 9 premium standards. As such, it's very unsurprising that the changes it received were almost exclusively nerfs.

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• DPM from 2051 to 1987
• Accuracy from 0.37 to 0.39
• Movement dispersion from 0.18/0.18 to 0.22/0.22
• Reverse speed from 16 km/h to 15 km/h (lol)
• Various hull armor nerfs – the more sloped part of the UFP was nerfed from 200 to 140, LFP was nerfed from 145 to 140 and spaced armor on the hull sides were removed
• Turret armor changed – instead of being 300 all the way on the front, it now gradually gets weaker towards the edges of the turret, much like the other German super-heavies with Maus-like turrets. Mantlet was also made slightly worse, as there's no longer parts where the mantlet overlaps with the turret armor.
• Cupola armor nerfed – now becomes weaker on the edges
• Track armor changed from 25 to 40 (a buff)
• Camo rating buffed from 2.77 to 2.91 (lmfao)

That's a big list of nerfs, but most of these nerfs are minor to completely insignificant. DPM nerf isn't that big of a deal with 530 alpha, nerfs to accuracy and soft stats are annoying, but manageable (only 0.02 and 0.01 worse than the E 75, respectively, and both values are good on the E 75), and stuff like the reverse speed nerf and minor hull armor changes aren't going to actually mean much in practice. However, the biggest change is the turret armor, which is actually a pretty significant nerf:

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Tiger-Maus against its own 311 mm APCR, current patch.

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Tiger-Maus against its own 311 mm APCR, 1.23 CT.

This is particularly problematic against 340 HEAT. Previously, even with 340 HEAT, you had to hit the middle strip of the turret, otherwise you'd bounce. Now, 340 HEAT will pretty much obliterate the entire face. While the mantlet nerf is small, it does nevertheless make the turret further easier to penetrate with +300 pen.

There's no doubt that the Tiger-Maus got much worse. However, despite all these nerfs, it doesn't look too bad to me. It went from being a "good to very strong" tank into "ehh to decent" tank. By tier 9 premium standards, that's still very good IMO, and it might still be potentially the strongest tier 9 premium. The gun still has 530 alpha with reasonable stats, and the armor still lets it completely shit on anything with less than 300 pen. The nerfs mean the Tiger-Maus will be noticeably worse off against tier 10s, so it became somewhat more MM reliant.

Ofc, because it's a tier 9 premium, there's still a chance the Tiger-Maus will get even further (^{as we'll see later on, no tier 9 premium is safe from nerfs, no matter how bad}).

Type 63

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• DPM nerfed from 2000 to 1794
• Reload nerfed from 9.60 to 10.70
• Gun cooldown time nerfed from 12.70 to 14 seconds
• Aiming time buffed from 2.7 to 2 seconds
• Dispersion when turning the turret buffed from 0.12 to 0.08

These changes are a very mixed bag. On the one hand, the DPM nerf undoubtedly sucks. 1.8k base DPM for 320 alpha is far away from being good. On the other hand, the gun handling got VERY significant buffs. 0.7 seconds off the aiming time and 50% turret rotation buff is a massive change. What this buff means is that the Type 63 can actually feasibly drop VStabs (aiming time and soft stats are both only a bit worse than the T-832) and run Hardening/Turbo/Rammer, which helps it a lot because it wants both Hardening and Turbo to fix its bad HP pool and mediocre top speed (for something that has no hull armor that is).

I'm not sure whether the change is actually a buff or nerf, but I do think it'll make the Type 63 more comfortable to play. The gun handling is now pretty good even without gun cooling. Looking into the stats, the Type 63 actually looks pretty comparable to the T-832, though it'll likely be a bit worse. Type has less reliable armor, less HP and it doesn't have the consistent good accuracy, but it has much more pen, more gun depression and it can get insane accuracy. The Type 63 still seems pretty awkward to play, so I'll remain cautious, but will be interesting to see how it'll turn out once it very likely releases in Holiday Ops boxes.

Object 752

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• Magazine reload nerfed from 34 to 40 seconds (wtf????)
• DPM nerfed from 1737 to 1512

So to summarize what the Object 752 is – it's slow, it has low HP pool, unreliable RNG armor, and absolutely dogshit gun that's basically like the Emil II's gun, but with worse burst damage, WORSE gun handling and 390 alpha instead of 440. It already seemed like a complete dumpsterfire of a tank, so what's WG's solution for this. Ah yes, let's nerf it even further! Where's your Russian bias now?

40 second magazine reload for 390 x 3 burst (with bad intra-clip reload and godawful gun handling to boot) is just laughable. What the fuck is this tank supposed to be at this point? It's like a extremely gimped, really dysfunctional version of the 116-F3 at tier 9, which sounds like something that you'd only want to play if you're outright suicidal. I don't know, but at least to me, this could very well be the worst tier 9 in the game. It has nothing going for it other than very gimmicky RNG armor.

Object 590

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• Accuracy buffed from 0.43 to 0.40

It's…something. The tank seemed pretty awful to me, so it certainly needed more than that, but it's a start. At least it didn't get nerfed like the Object 752, lol.

New tanks

A ton of new tanks were added, including:

• BZ-72-1
• T 54D
• ISU-122-2
• Tiger II (T) (most likely for the rumored GuP collab)
• ARMT
• Chaffee no. 594
• Pz. IV F2
• IT-3
• A7E3
• Pzw. 39
• Vickers 6 ton

Pretty much all tanks premium and reward vehicles that were supertested in past 2 months. The only two tanks that are missing are the Nemesis and BT-42.

BZ-72-1

No longer has the ridiculous 75 km/h (that could be boosted to 90 km/h) top speed with rockets. However, it still looks like a pretty strong vehicle, as it combines a hard hitting gun with 560 alpha, reasonable armor, and maximum top speed of around 73-75 km/h with rockets, which is still insane for a heavy tank.

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Vs. 340 HEAT

Cupolas are large and easy to hit, and are exposed even when hulldown. There's also a roof weakspot that's 45 mm thick, meaning that 150 mm guns and even Type 5's AP gun (140 mm) will overmatch it. However, the turret itself is super strong – as seen here, if you don't hit the cupolas, it's completely invincible to 340 HEAT. This thing pretty much only fears the 420 HEAT from the JP E100, and even that will struggle when this thing uses its gun depression. Hull armor is a lot worse – sides are weak, UFP is decent but can get penned by gold, and the LFP is complete cheese.

0.20/0.20/0.10 movement dispersion isn't great, but it could be worse. None of the gun stats aside from alpha are great, either – 0.4 dispersion, pretty bad DPM at 2240 and 320 HEAT isn't the best.

Outside of rockets, the BZ-72-1 is a pretty bland, mediocre 560 alpha heavy. However, it's a 560 alpha heavy that can reach positions faster than pretty much any medium except the CS-63, and it probably actually reaches certain uphill positions like Malinovka hill as fast or even faster than the CS-63, thanks to its comically insane specific power of well over 40 hp/ton with rockets. It doesn't look nearly as overbearing as it was on its first iteration (how WG ever thought that was a good idea), but that kind of speed on a heavy with 560 alpha is still very scary. I wouldn't be surprised if it got nerfed even further.

T 54D

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HP pool and DPM were nerfed compared to the initial ST version, now having very bad DPM at 2108 base. However, it makes it up with spaced armor, that actually gives this thing very solid hull armor:

Vs. 268 APCR

LFP is also 250 mm effective vs APCR; this thing will bully low tiers hard.

Another thing that is worth noting about this thing is that despite its awful 12.8 hp/ton specific power, it has hovercraft terrain resists, so it actually gets to its 45 km/h top speed. 0.20/0.20/0.12 soft stats aren't great, but they're better than expected, given this tank is "supposed" to have terrible stabilization, according to WG's supertest article.

Basically, a Super Pershing/T-55A hybrid with a gun that's accurate and has 390 alpha but poor DPM. Very interesting, actually.

This thing is labeled as a reward tank. I wouldn't be surprised if this thing ended up becoming one of the new BP reward tanks next year.

ISU-122-2

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No changes compared to the initial ST version.

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Goofy ahh double barrel box

Looks pretty fun. Soft stats are actually very good (0.15/0.15/0.10), mobility is very much like the Ka-Ri (okay top speed but great everything else), surprisingly high HP pool and the camo could be worse (13% base camo is workable). The main selling point is the very fast salvo preparation time.

This thing actually reminds me from the Ka-Ri before it got its last changed (HP pool nerfed but armor buffed). The platform is incredibly similar – more or less same mobility, same HP pool, similar camo and similar armor layout. The main difference are the guns, but this thing similarly has very good gun handling for a TD like the Ka-Ri does. Of cource, the double barrels do fundamentally make this tank different, but the fact the playstyle seems to be pretty similar to the Ka-Ri, just with a fast-salvo double barrel guns do make this thing potentially exciting to me.

Others

I'll quickly go through some noteworthy changes and stuff:

• Tiger II T's accuracy was buffed from 0.38 to 0.35, and aiming time from 2.2 to 2 sec. Compared to the King Tiger C, it's mostly identical, but it loses 200 DPM in favor of much faster aiming time and marginally better accuracy. Overall still a worse tank, I'd say.
• ARMT looks super goofy. That being said, its DPM is really, really bad. 345 damage burst in 5 seconds and then 19 second reload? Yikes.
• IT-3's reload was buffed from 8 to 5 seconds. Yes, its reload was reduced almost by 40%. What is even more hilarious is that even with such an insane reload buff, it still looks like a pretty bad tank, which really shows how useless the first iteration was. That kind of reload buff would instantly make 99% of the tanks in the game extremely overpowered.