9.2 is boring, noone cares about that. But 9.3 – that’s something else. Since I get a lot of questions about the patch and usually it’s the same questions repeating themselves, here’s a summary of the facts we know about tanks in patch 9.3. It will bring:
- US light line
- Soviet tier 7 and 8 light tanks
- German tier 8 light tank
- KV-1S split
(and a Hellcat nerf, but not a T49 nerf for example)
US light line
Starts from Chaffee, which will lose its “special LT” status (it’s the last of the original hightier scouts), will be nerfed but it will also recieve normal tier 5 LT matchmaking. Its top turret will be removed and will be replaced by the production variant of the M24 Chaffee (basically, both turrets look roughly the same, the new one has a machinegun or something). The line composition will be:
Tier 5 – Chaffee
Tier 6 – T37 Light Tank
Tier 7 – M41 Walker Bulldog
Tier 8 – T49 Light Tank
So yes, the tier 8 will have a 152mm gun-launcher, without the missiles of course. The line will not be a “blind end”, it will merge with the second American medium/heavy line (T49 will go to the T54).
Soviet light tanks
Tier 7 – LTTB
Tier 8 – “Light T-54″: in Russian it’s called “T-54 oblegchennyj” (“light T-54″), English name is not known for now. (screenies were even officially released by Wargaming) – keep in mind that originally, the LT-54 was supposed to be premium tier 8 medium tank, but the developers, unable to buff the LTTB to tier 8, have decided to make it a LT8. To that end, they buffed its mobility and replaced the tier 8 medium premium Soviet tank slot with “T-54 Model 1945″.
LTTB will be unlockable from MT-25. There will be no Soviet LT5, the line to MT-25 will stay as it is now. It is not known whether the light T-54 will be a blind branch or will end up merging into the Soviet medium branch (LT-54 to T-54), but the latter is likely.
German RU251
RU251 will be a German tier 8 light tank. It will be unlockable from the Aufklärungspanzer Panther (please note that while there has been some talk as to replacing the AFK Panther with something else, nothing is confirmed as of now). It is not known whether the RU251 branch will continue to be blind or will merge with something else, but given the “modern” nature of the tank, it’s likely it will merge into Leopard prototype.
KV-1S split
In 9.3, KV-1S will be split into two tanks – tier 5 KV-1S (basically a lighter but faster version of the KV-1) and tier 6 KV-85, a nerfed version of the current KV-1S with large turret. KV-85 will have two top gun options – a 100mm and a 122mm, with roughly the same penetration.
As for the Hellcat nerf, it was scheduled for 9.1 already (and then it was cancelled) in following way (so it’s likely something like that will appear in 9.3).
Hellcat
- stock suspension aim spread from moving and aim spread from turning the hull increased (nerfed) by 60 percent
- elite suspension aim spread from moving and aim spread from turning the hull increased (nerfed) by 57 percent
- stock tracks terrain passability (good/medium/bad terrain) nerfed by 9/14/9 percent
- elite tracks terrain passability (good/medium/bad terrain) nerfed by 10/17/10 percent
- maximum reverse speed nerfed from 20 km/h to 12 km/h
- aim spread of the 76mm M1A2 when moving the turret increased (nerfed) by 12 percent
- aim spread of the 90mm M3 when moving the turret increased (nerfed) by 25 percent
- 90mm M3 reload time nerfed from 8s to 8,5s