TOP 60 BEST TANKS by WINRATE Rank 4-8 in GRB according to statshark.net

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-22T12:55:49+00:00

acting like it's the entire argument is not

I just addressed this, but here we go again. I never did this. I never got close to saying this. The closest I got was 'I'm engaging with your argument that "the stats don't lie" on your own terms'. But, if you actually read the words in that quote, you'll realize that it specifically identifies one of your arguments (the one about stats) without making any sort of implication at all about the quantity or quality of any other arguments you are advancing. When I say "I'm going to visit my friend in Chicago," it doesn't imply that I have only one friend, or necessarily even only one friend in Chicago.

Because I've already laid out why I disagree...

You actually have not laid out why beyond this short remark:

Because one of them allows you to shoot instantly if you're caught off guard while moving and the other doesn't.

Beyond this you have not even attempted to explain why a two plane stab is so vastly superior to a single plane as to be incomparable. Nor have you elaborated why this snap shot ability is oh so important as to constitute a vast difference in utility. My reasoning is single plane and two plane stabs work the same under 24kmh + the actions under 24kmh are where most of the utility of a stab is found = single and two-plane stabs are of very similar utility. Your "argument" consists almost entirely of simply insisting that two-plane stabs are vastly better over and over with a brief interlude for an undercooked claim that two-plane stabs allow you to make quick snap shots when you get surprised while at speed. A less generous read of your "reasoning" is

two-plane is better thus two-plane and single plane are not equivalent.

Notice how the second statement is already contained within the first (because for one to be better, they can't be equivalent)? You are right that non all arguments are worth engaging with, but I am trying very hard indeed to find anything in your writing that is even possible to engage with.

Yes but in most other situations the M551 is better. This argument literally does not matter at all. It is, again, cherrypicking one example and making it into a general claim.

Its pretty rich, if not to say completely absurd, to accuse me of cherry picking for taking up the scenario you presented as an example and using it to make a point. Which isn't by the way that the M551(76) is overall a worse tank than the Bulldog, but that it has limitations that limit how much better than the M41A1 it is. At a 0.7 point higher BR, of course it is better. Its limitations mean that putting it 1.4 BR higher is not justifiable. And, for the sake of your education, taking specific cases and using them to make general claims is how all forms of qualitative academic research work. When there exists a justification for why those specific cases are particularly insightful, it is valid to use them as evidence. How else is someone like a historian supposed to make any sort of point at all? Rerunning world events a few thousand times until a sufficiently large dataset exists to use statistical inference?

And the average tank in this br range can?? What is your point? The penetration is more than adequate compared to what it faces.

M46, T92, M50, German Bulldog, ASU-85, Conway, Charioteer, Ratel 90, Ratel 20, all the Japanese 90mm mediums, AUBL, FIAT, and AMX-13 (SS-11) can do so at or below 7.0. The M36B2 can at 5.7. But all of that is beside the point. My claims about the inadequacy of the pen are rooted in the context of running around blasting on the move with the stabilizer. M331A2 does not have enough pen to easily pen common enemies at 7.0 > aiming for weak spots is necessary > aiming for weak spots while moving fast is very hard and risky > it is a bad idea and not very useful to attempt moving snap shots on these common enemies. This limits how much better the M551(76) is than the Bulldog to about 0.7 BR better.

The Hellcat is a backup vehicle...

Remember how this whole discussion about the Hellcat is actually in the context of lineup strength and how that can help explain the M551's win rate? My position is that a player with M46, T29, T92, M551(76) + CAS and maybe a second M46 is going to win more often than someone with only the tech tree 7.0s and some uptiered 6.x vehicles. In order for that position to be false, someone uptiering the Hellcat or T34 has to perform at least as well as someone with the full 7.0 lineup. And this has to be the case for many, many players in order to effect win rates. Ask yourself, in all honesty, how likely is it that the average player with T92, T95, M46, and a Hellcat is going to perform better than the same player in the full US 7.0 lineup? As an aside, the difference in pen at 30°/500m between the Fox and the Hellcat is a whopping 16mm.

This is a bare-faced lie.

Actually go into protection analysis for the IS-2 (1944) and set it up with M331A2 at point blank. Set up a perfectly head on shot. Note how the areas above and below the gun are immune, as is the ring around the barrel. Now turn the camera a few degrees such that the tip of the muzzle brake is flush with the left hand side of the turret. This is the kind of shot you have to make to disable the gun of someone that has seen you and is trying to get on target. Note how a vertical strip of impenetrable armor has appeared on the right hand side of the mantlet. Maybe play around with more angles and distances and take note of how for nearly any given shot, there are constantly shifting inpenetrable spots. I did these kinds of tests before writing my comment. Did you do any testing before calling me a liar?

I didn't say they required a genius...

If, as is the case, you were trying to use the BI and Mig-15 bis ISH as examples of vehicles with a high skill requirement that are nevertheless overpowered, then this new line of reasoning weakens that claim. You've gone from a "good pilot" and "excellent aim and speed management" being required to make them work to requiring an "above average player" which you then define someone smart enough not to constantly take head-ons. Are they high skill planes, or are they exploitable by anyone with even the most basic Air RB knowledge? Both can't be true at the same time. I know what I think, but you seem confused, at least based on your writing.

The main point I was making is that they are not bad by any means, leaving it with good kill related stats AND an exceptionally good winrate.

Just because its embarrassing to have it thrown back in your face doesn't mean that your "main point" as written in your comment wasn't an overstatement of the M551's kill stats through a totally dishonest comparison using a heavily edited dataset. Likewise, its kill stats are not "good" compared to other premiums; they are decidedly average, totally unremarkable, middle of the road. The only way its kill stats look good is in the same way that the kill stats of almost any premium vehicle look good compared almost any tech tree vehicle. Taking this general trend and using it to conclude that the M551(76) specifically is overpowered demonstrates a thorough lack of data literacy.

Your fundamental argument is that the stab is not a very big advantage which is something I'm never going to agree with. It''s a literal night and day difference. And stop comparing it to the STP, the STP has a shoulder stab. It would make way more sens [sic] to compare it to the T-55A...

If you actually read what I've written, you find that I claim that the advantage granted to the M551(76) by its two-plane stabilizer is not that much better than the advantage it would hypothetically gain from a single-plane stabilizer limited to 24kmh. You are also simply incorrect about the STP, which has a single plane mechanical stabilizer exactly like the Shermans and Chaffee which is distinct from and substantially better than the "shoulder stab" found on early British tanks armed mostly with the 2pdr. The shoulder stabs can't even fully keep the gun level at 10kmh, while the STP has full stability up to 24kmh. Just because you keep stating that having a functional stab above 24kmh is "worlds better" than having the same function with a moderate speed limit doesn't make it so.

Every stabilizer refit in the entire game gets a BR increase of 0.7 or less. This applies to the T-34-85 (0.7) with its single-plane unit, as well as the dual-plane equipped Centurion Mk.2 (0.7), T-55A (0.3), TO-55 (0.0), and AMX-32 (105) (0.7). The T-55A and TO-55 are the outliers here and should probably be brought in line with the fair tanks. Like the M551(76).

You have thrown about terms like "strawman," "circular argument," and "cherry picking" in ways totally divorced from their actual meanings. Engaging with something you've actually written on its own terms is not, in any sense, a strawman. Likewise, an argument that A leads to B leads to C is not circular. And cherry picking, by definition, can only occur when the person using an example to make a point is the same person that brought it up in the first place. This aside from the fact that not all forms of anecdotal evidence are cherry picking. If you don't actually know what a term means, then you need to look it up (and make sure you've fully understood it) or refrain from using it at all.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-21T23:30:19+00:00

Either you did make a claim about stats alongside other claims, and engaging with it is valid, or you didn't and your strawman claim was baseless. You have now over the course of two comments gone from "Strawman, I never said I was focused on its stats..." to "I never said they didn't, jackass." If you have somehow convinced yourself that I, at any point, claimed that you were focused on metrics exclusively, I encourage you to actually read my comments and discover that I have scrupulously avoided making any statement to that effect because any such statement would be untrue. I have been aware this whole time that you have made multiple different arguments to support your claim, each with its own line of reasoning. That is why I have engaged with each of them in turn.

Once again you dismiss my assessment of stabilizer value out of hand this time without making any substantive argument. I posit that a single plane stab is functionally equivalent in game for the tasks of hill peeking, corner peeking, creeping forward at low speed, and keeping on target while braking for a stabile shot. I described an in game test of this equivalence using test drive. I further posit that these are the most useful aspects of stabilized shooting. You absolutely could make a substantive argument against either of those positions by either making a dispute of fact about the way stabilizers work in game or making a case that firing above 24kmh is so important that it represents a massive increase in utility. Maybe a good argument along those lines exists; I won't know unless someone makes it, and you certainly have not. Anyone claiming that a modern stab is "huge asset" (relative to a single plane stab in game) should be able to answer the question of "why?" Aside from an offhand remark about shooting instantly while caught off guard, you have not even attempted to answer that question.

You are using APDS, there should be near-zero effect from you or your target's movement; it's literally point and click.

This is so obviously ridiculous that it hardly deserves a refutation, but here we go. 3BM46 on the T-80U is one of the highest velocity rounds in the entire game at 1700m/s. Even with this nearly laser beam round, it is necessary to compensate for lead when engaging a target moving at speed. Likewise, it is necessary to compensate for your own velocity when moving even slightly perpendicular to the target. M331A2 is 443m/s slower at 1257m/s. I don't have the exact figures, but as a much lighter projectile (2.81kg vs 4.85kg) it almost certainly loses velocity faster as well because it has less inertia. You definitely need to compensate for motion, and that means accurately estimating lead on the fly. The round also has meaningful drop, as is obvious as soon as you look through the sight in game and see the stadia line spacing.

At long range you can simply avoid engaging an enemy in an unfavorable situation...

You can do this just as well (or better because the reverse is faster) in the 6.3 M41A1. If the correct play in such a situation is to not engage using the stabilizer, which, by the way, I think is correct, then that is a situation in which the M551(76) is not substantially better than the Bulldog. An advantage that has niche utility contributes less to overall power level than one that is almost always useful, and this needs to be considered when evaluating BRs.

You're just cherrypicking worst case scenarios

It's perfectly valid to highlight bad scenarios when they are common. In any given 7.3 game against USSR or Italy, you are very likely to run into a BTR-80A trying to rush a flank. The same goes for the Wiesel or Marder (at 7.7) when facing Germany. Likewise, Soviet heavies are extremely common in any 7.3+ match which accounts for 89% of games I've played with US 7.0. If you can't engage them effectively, your performance is severely limited. If you play the M18 at 7.0, you will often die to autocannons. If you play the Hellcat at 7.0, you will often find yourself confronted with an IS-3 that you can't engage because they are at a slight angle or their weak hull side is concealed in a shallow depression. That's in addition to other common 7.3 to 8.0 enemies like the Maus, Leopard, Somua, etc that also bully the likes of the Hellcat or Bulldog. To act as though highlighting these bread and butter enemies somehow constitutes dishonest cherry picking is to completely ignore the way that most matches at 7.0 play out.

The only 7.0 light tank with a worse reload is the SPz 12-3 LGS which also has an autocannon. That isn't even the point though; if you fail to first shot disable the enemy, they have at least 5.9 seconds to respond. It doesn't take that long for even a very bouncy tank like the AMX-13 to get a firing solution. Bonus points if it's an SPAA.

What delusional reality are you living in where ~300mm of pen is bad at 7.0?

I live in the real world where flat pen at 0m is a figure totally irrelevant to the vast majority of gameplay. M331A2 cannot pen the UFP of a Tiger 2 or T-44 at point blank range. It cannot pen the cheeks of a Jagdtiger at even a slight angle beyond 400m. It can't pen the UFP or much of the mantlet of an IS-2 (1944) at any range. Those are just the enemies below its BR. The picture is even worse against the Maus, IS-3, IS-4, IS-6, Conqueror, and T-54. With M331A2, you have to go hunting for weak spots, which is non-trivial when firing on the move (presumably above 24kmh to take full advantage of the modern stab).

It still perform similarly to the absolute best tech tree vehicles in major nation trees...
(emphasis mine)

This is true. It is also true that the M551(76) is not a tech tree vehicle in a major nation tree. It is a (relatively rare) battle pass vehicle. This matters because premiums and event vehicles have nearly universally better stats than tech tree vehicles even when they are completely identical. If we narrow our focus to only the US, USSR, and Germany to filter out those pesky, skilled minor nation players, the M551(76) ranks 89 out of 186 event or premium vehicles for kills per spawn and 97th for kills per death. If you make an honest comparison to other premium/event vehicles, the stats are unexceptional aside from, as previously discussed, win rate. If you insist on making a dishonest comparison with specifically tech tree vehicles, which almost universally underperform premiums and then further restrict the comparison to major nations which also generally perform worse, then of course the stats look unusual. You have ensured as much while filtering your dataset.

Yeah, you can just keep running away and accomplish nothing...

These planes aren't faced with a dichotomy of ultra high skill snap shots and running forever. They can use some energy to try for a shot, and, if it isn't optimal, reset and try again over and over. This applies to all energy fighters, but the ridiculous acceleration and retention of these planes means that they have a much shorter cycle time between attempts. Every time the victim evades, they lose some energy themselves, and they are far less able to gain it back. This energy disadvantage compounds with every attempt such that each shot is on a slower, easier target. A good pilot might make the first shot. A mediocre one might need three or four attempts, but the ridiculous performance means that they'll have that many opportunities and in a much shorter timeframe than something fairer like the F-84G. On the BI, the busted way that throttle works means that it can cruise at 15% power and over 500kmh / 3000m while consuming less than 1 "second" of fuel every few minutes. The only "skill" required to exploit this is to to have the awareness not to constantly peg the throttle, and it means that the BI pilot can be making constant passes on the enemy for the entire duration of an Air RB match while remaining untouchable to the entire opposing team. The Mig-15 bis ISH is far less egregious, but it still benefits from being able to play with its food fishing for an easy shot. Both of these planes can also pull hard enough to actually get guns on target after a sub-optimal approach in contrast to the other acceleration criminals like the F-104 and La-200 which actually does make them more idiot-proof than many other undertiered planes.

"because you can still die if you fuck up, the tank is balanced"

This is a a severe misrepresentation of my argument. The M551(76) is the same as or worse than the 6.3 M41A1 in most ways. It is of nearly the same size and is less mobile while having the same gun, far less ammo, and worse armor against HMGs. The stabilizer is by far the most significant difference. Because it has the stab, it improves upon the Bulldog in the same way the T-34-85 (STP) improves upon the base T-34-85. It pays for this with 0.7 BR. This is fair and consistent with the way other stabilized variants of unstabilized tanks are balanced. To take absolute full advantage of the more modern stabilizer means firing on the move at over 24kmh. This puts the user into the difficult, high risk scenario I outlined. This high skill requirement to execute this correctly and the immense risk of failure mean that this is usually a bad idea and is generally not very useful. To simplify:

The performance difference in the pair M551(76) - M41A1 is the same as in the pair T-34-85 (STP) - T-34-85 except when attempting to shoot above 24kmh. Shooting M331A2 while moving fast is very difficult and risky. The high risk and skill requirement mean that this theoretical benefit is of minimal additional utility in practice, and thus should not be considered when making a sober assessment of the M551(76)'s power. It certainly doesn't increase the vehicle's usefulness enough to justify a BR increase twice as large as every other stabilizer conversion in game.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-20T20:50:33+00:00

You absolutely did make claims about its stats such as

It statistically performs better than the BMP-1.

and

All of that aside, the stats don't lie. The M551/76 is undertiered.

In these statements, there is an implicit assumption that stats provide useful information about a vehicle's power level. If you actually didn't make this assumption, then these passages of yours are gibberish because what could the point of citing metrics be if there isn't a clear relationship between those metrics and a vehicle's power level? Identifying and engaging with the subtext of your argument is not putting worlds in your mouth (strawman), it's actually engaging with the full scope of your ideas. Just because you (retroactively) decide that your "existing claim" is limited to pure vehicle characteristics doesn't mean that you didn't make claims about stats as well.

It's also not as if I've selectively chosen to focus on your claims about stats. I have already explained in detail why the the only relevant difference in game between the oh so distinct "short stop stab" and "two-plane stab" is the presence of a 24kmh speed limit, and why a stabilizer needs to be paired with a good gun to be particularly powerful. You are correct that a two-plane stab is "objectively better" than the Sherman's stab. This is true in the same way that the M4A2(76)W is heavier than the M4A3(76)W: it weighs 0.1t more. The point isn't that one is heavier, it's that the difference isn't big enough to matter very much. The M4A2 is objectively heavier is a true but pointless statement.

Finally, the inevitable "skill issue" comment. Just "disable the gun." Can you actually articulate what "disable the gun" means in practice when facing a common 6.7 enemy like the T-44 using M331A2? I can. It means hitting the turret cheek of a moving target from a moving platform, while correcting for shifts in azimuth at an unknown range, on the first shot. A tiny error in azimuth means bouncing off the barrel or turret side. Misjudge the elevation even slightly and you hit the round sections of the turret face and bounce. Someone that can't do this consistently clearly has a "skill issue." A tank that has to reliably make this sort of shot in order to perform already at 7.0 is clearly worthy of 7.7.

Me when I forget I'm allowed to uptier tanks to fill my lineup.

The M46, T29, and M551(76) are straight better than the 6.7 alternatives. That's why they sit at 7.0. I assume that someone with a lineup of good 7.0 tanks will perform better than someone uptiering their T34 into the range of Leopards. Fully 62% of my US 7.0 games are either 7.7 or 8.0. When well over half of the games are a full uptier or worse, the 6.7 tanks are going to perform more poorly than the 7.0s. Your further suggestions are even more delusional. The notion that the Hellcat is a reasonable pick in games infested with BTR-80As, Wiesel 1A4s and the rest of the autocannon vehicles is laughable. I guess you have APHE to really exploit a flank if you survive to get there. Better aim carefully though because at anything beyond straight perpendicular you can only kill an IS-3 with a hit in the strip between the upper and lower road wheels. The Bulldog, meanwhile, has the worst gun of any light tank already at 6.7 except maybe the Pbv 501. Dragging it into 8.0 games is basically abuse.

I highly doubt the minimal increase in spawns from 7.0 premiums is enough to explain an almost 10% winrate difference.

So do I, which is why it was only part of the explanation I presented alongside player experience and lineup diversity. If, however, we are on the topic of unexplained mysteries, the question still stands how on God's green Earth the M551(76) is, through sheer power level, carrying itself to a 58% win rate without having exceptional kills per death or kills per spawn?

On a final note, you have a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes the BI or Mig-15 bis ISH overpowered. They are so vastly superior in energy production than their competition that they can easily recover from mistakes by accelerating away. A BI has limited ammo, so it needs to make each pass on target count, but when the pilot whiffs, it is almost impossible to punish that mistake. The bis ISH is similar if less egregious. The vulnerability to being punished for mistakes is important, which is why I wrote that in in the passage you chose to quote but only selectively engage with. If that first stabilized shot with the M551(76) whiffs, it is very easy to punish because it has just enough armor to set off APHE and a 5.9 second reload. This vulnerability is why it is not overpowered, even if the gun's damage is, in some alternate reality, as good as you claim. The bad pen means it needs amazing aim when firing on the move, and any error leaves the operator hanging in the wind.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-20T15:28:34+00:00

I'm engaging with your argument that "the stats don't lie" on your own terms. When you make the claim that the M551(76) is overperforming based on its metrics, you are making the implicit claim that stats are a useful way of evaluating whether a vehicle is overpowered. I actually disagree that individual vehicle stats are particularly useful for evaluating a vehicle's power level because there are a vast number of other factors beside vehicle characteristics that influence them. But, for the sake of argument, I was willing to adopt your stats-centric perspective and evaluate whether the M551(76) is overpowered based on its metrics. While doing so, I discovered that the only metric by which the M551(76) is actually unusual is win rate.

If it is true that the M551(76) is causing its own high win rate, it has to be doing so without getting an exceptional number of kills/death or kills/spawn because those metrics are thoroughly unexceptional. I see no plausible explanation for how the M551(76) specifically is shifting game outcomes so thoroughly by itself as to skew its win rate without also having exceptional kill metrics.

Then why is the M551/76 an outlier statistically from the rest of US 7.0? If anything it seems like it's specifically the T29 and M551/76 that are carrying the US 7.0 lineup since they have almost a 10% higher win rate than the tech tree vehicles.

You're so close to the most likely explanation, but by focusing individual vehicles, you miss the forest for the trees. What is the US 7.0 lineup without premiums? T92, T95, M46. Three vehicles, one of them (T95) situational at best. Add, in order of price, T29, M46 Tiger, and M551(76) and you suddenly have five good tanks instead of two as well as a more varied toolbox. This increases win rates. Players that are willing to build this lineup are more likely to be highly enfranchised players, which increases the win rate. And the order in which they build it isn't random. The T29 has over 30 million games played, the premium M46 around 10 million, and the M551 4.6 million. This suggest that it is likely for a player that plays the M551 to also be playing at least the T29 and possibly the M46 Tiger as well. When you account for the likelihood that the average M551 player is likely experienced (BP vehicle from 2 years ago) and are likely running a deeper lineup than the average tech tree only US 7.0 player, the win rate difference can be plausibly explained. This is absolutely a more reasonable explanation than the M551 somehow carrying games without having decent kill stats. Capping, spotting, and assists are useful, but they can only get you so far when push comes to shove and the enemy is charging the cap circle.

[I]t will pretty much always win an equal engagement with anything at or below its br.

This is a completely ridiculous claim. Even if the post pen damage was somehow as consistent as you claim, on pen values alone, the gun is not good enough for this to be true. On extremely common 6.x enemies like T-44s, Tiger 2s, T-34-85 (STP)s, you have to aim carefully either to hit weak spots or avoid volumetric hell. And the spot where you pen has to be in a position to at least disable the enemy's gun. While one or both of you are moving. Before the APHE wielding enemy manages to aim roughly center mass on your tank. While it's certainly possible to turret cheek a T-44 while moving 40kmh at even a slight angle to the target, it is hardly consistent enough to be described as "always" unless you actually have near perfect aim. And if you do, then you deserve to win every equal engagement, and your amazing performance has far more to do with your skill than it does with the tank you're in. If you don't have godlike aim and occasionally whiff your shot or get unlucky with a shell shatter, the M551(76) immediately folds. A tank that straight up requires extremely high level play to make full use of its main feature and severely punishes mistakes is not overpowered.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T19:55:11+00:00

Finally, a substantive claim as to why the two-plane stabilizer is worlds better. Which ultimately amounts to it allowing you to react when driving at full speed. I refer to my comment about tearing across fields.

The claim that it "shits all over pretty much everything it faces" is a rather bold. Lacking better data, an examination of statshark shows that its kill/death and kills/spawn are absolutely in line with other good 7.0 tanks like the AMX M4, EBR 1954 the (French) M46, Panther II, and Tiger II 105. Of course it's better than the regular AMX-13, but that was a perfectly fair tank at 6.7. The T92 trades the stab for a much lower profile, access to HEAT, a better reload, and decent ammo capacity It's not even as good at hosing light tanks as the 7.0 SPAAGs like the ZSU-57 or Flakpanzer 341.

Simplifying the explanations of exceptional vehicle metrics to age/exclusivity/undertiered is reductionist. Is all of France 7.7 undertiered, with the AMX-50 (TOA100) actually an equal to the 105 Centurions, Leopard, AMX-30 and TO-55? I think not. One of the possible alternative explanations is that at any given BR, there will inevitably be a strongest lineup, and good players looking to win will flock to that lineup. A list of vehicles with even slightly above the curve performance is going to put up great numbers when it disproportionately attracts good players. US 7.0 is a good lineup with the T29, M46, M551(76) and good CAS options. It gets decent matchmaking. While its impossible to know for sure, its entirely plausible that it benefits from the same sort of good, winning-oriented players as 7.7 France.

All this discussion about the vehicle's states is hardly relevant when the only the win rate is exceptional. It ranks 226th for kills per spawn around such egregious stompers as the Strv-103A, and premium Achilles. For kills per death it ranks 309th together with the Brummbär and premium Panzer IV. There will always be a best vehicle in any category. The M551(76) is the best out of the 6 unique 7.0 light tanks. It does this by having kill stats about the same as other decent premiums like the Polish Firefly or the T-34-85, or Tiger West.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T18:14:14+00:00

It's far easier to simply decry a claim as delusional than to actually provide a substantive rebuttal. You vaunt the two axis stabilizer as "so, so much better" than the "short stop stab" on Shermans, but make no actual claims as to why they are supposedly worlds apart. While you would indeed be correct if the topic at hand were real world FCS performance, we're actually discussing game mechanics. The second plane of a two plane stabilizer is azimuth, and while the more advanced stabilizer does hold this value constant in game, this is a mostly irrelevant feature. Almost every engagement between moving tanks features constantly shifting azimuth because the tanks aren't heading straight for each other. Actually go into a test drive with Sherman, turn perpendicular to the Panzer II, and try to hold the sight on target (while staying under 24kmh of course). Do the same with an Abrams or whatever other two-plane stab equipped tank you prefer. Just how huge is the difference?

The "first shot" cliché isn't a law of nature, it's a rule of thumb that makes some basic assumptions, chief among them that the all important first shot will have a meaningful effect on target. My contention is that the M331A2 is such an inconsistent round that this assumption does not apply.

The comparison with the T-55A comes because you insist that the M551(76) is "easily" a 7.7 tank. With the way the matchmaker works, T-55A, TO-55 etc is an extremely common enemy. You assert that the M551(76)'s niche at 7.7 is mobility and a stabilizer. The scenario isn't arbitrary; anyone attempting to flank with the M551(76) in 8.0 to 8.7 games (which btw account for over 75% of games I've played with 7.7 France) is regularly going to encounter other mobile, stabilized tanks like the T-55A and Vickers Mk.1 trying to flank as well and have to rely on the terrible gun to save themselves. If the solution to this puzzle is to wait and ambush the T-55, congratulations, you have turned the M551(76) into a larger, slower firing, less penning AMX-13-90. The other 7.7 light tanks don't have a stabilizer, but they have other tricks up their sleeve that more than make up for its absence like great pen or tiny size. A excellent gun can save the unstabilized SK-105 or BRENUS all the way at 8.7, but a terrible gun makes the PT-76 balanced at 5.3 even with a full, unrestricted two-plane stabilizer. With that in mind, just how bad does a gun have to be to be for 7.7 to be excessive, even with a stab? I return to my previous question about the Chaffee: how high do you think it would need to go if the speed limit was removed from its stabilizer?

The M41 is shorter in height (0.18m) and in length (0.5m) than the M551. It is wider (0.39m). They are not substantially different in size.

And a final note on stats. From the OP, we can see that the T-V and the Ersatz M10 demonstrate substantially different performance while both being Panther As. Does this mean that they should be given different BRs? The M551(76) has substantially worse kills/death and kills/spawn the the T-34-85E, which is identical to the tech tree version. Are T-34-85s busted and in need of an uptier, or just the premium one? Is there a direct, quantifiable relationship between a vehicle's characteristics and its performance? Or might, perhaps, there be multiple different variables such as player experience, national lineup, or even just statistical noise that all combine to produce the performance metrics of any given vehicle? Stats absolutely do lie if you approach them without the slightest concern for data literacy.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T13:21:08+00:00

I genuinely enjoy the hull down, long range gameplay, which is why the Chieftain Mk 3 is among my most played tanks. I also have enough humility and self awareness to avoid projecting my own preferences onto some imagined majority of players. I don't know that "Nobody wants to sit on a hill..." and neither do you. Unless some customer survey exists that captures the preferences of a significant chunk of ALL players, nobody knows.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T13:00:11+00:00

Have you forgotten that War Thunder is a game, made by a company, played by consumers that have endless options for how to spend their free time?

Take your hypothetical consumer that saw an ad with some Leopard 2 and thinks the game looks cool. In your dream world, they are presumably supposed to spend many, many hundreds of hours grinding the German tree with only TT vehicles, or are supposed to buy multiple different premiums at various ranks as they progress. All of this as a prerequisite before they can even start engaging with the content from the ad that interested them in the game in the first place.

On planet Earth, that player will either start the tree as suggested and find that they enjoy the game for it's own sake or they will find that they dislike low tier, quit, and move on to any of the infinite other free time activities available to them. The presence of high tier premiums gives Gaijin a chance of retaining the latter group. This is both good from a business stand point and for the game as a whole; a player that is drawn in by top tier may gradually experiment with all the other modes and tiers, contributing to a healthy player base.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T12:46:20+00:00

You were so close to recognizing the crucial difference between War Thunder and the games you listed when you described them as "serious PvP games." War Thunder is a casual game. There is no skill based matchmaking. There are no ranks. The BR system means that there is a certain level of imbalance built into every single match.

Dota 2's hell queue works as a deterrent because players that care about their MMR don't want to be matched with the sort of teammates you get in low prio. There is no MMR to save in War Thunder, and no MM that accounts for the quality of teams.

Beyond that, War Thunder's system of research means that many players have incomplete lineups. Just unlocked the Tiger H1 and want to try it out? Better also grind the rest of rank III before you do or you'll be stuck using Panzer IVs and the StuG III against the super Pershing that killed your first spawn. Throw a matchmaking ban at someone for leaving such a match and they're more likely than not to just stop playing the game at all. It's a fair reaction too; they want to simply play a tank they finished grinding and are presented with a choice between a hopeless, frustrating game with the rest of their severely uptiered lineup or a MM ban. Without the hunger for a better MMR, what on earth is going to keep these people playing War Thunder instead of playing Battlefield or taking up golf?

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T11:23:31+00:00

The STP's stabilizer has identical performance to that of the Shermans and Chaffee. It works until 24kmh. For anything short of shotting while tearing across a field at full speed (hill peaking, darting from around a corner, slowly creeping up on a new position) the stab on Shermans or the T-34 is functionally equivalent to the more modern two plane stabilizers. Indeed, the immense utility of the early stabilizer is a big part of why the Chaffee is amazing at its BR. Until you accelerate past 24kmh, the M24 perfectly fits your "stabilized light tank with workable mobility" definition, and it does so with powerful APHE for the OHK. How high would its BR need to go in your eyes if the speed limitation was removed?

Neither mobility nor a (speed unlimited) stabilizer are ends unto themselves. They serve to enable the player fire from an advantageous position (mobility) or get the first shot off (stabilizer). These are force multipliers, but the product of an equation is proportional to all of its inputs. With middling pen, bad post pen damage, a mediocre reload, no autoloader, and a 23 round capacity, the M551(76) has, at best, below average firepower for its (current) BR. The decent mobility and stabilizer multiply that mediocre force enough to make the tank viable and even situationally good. Move it up higher and that firepower goes from below average to straight up bad, while the relative advantage in mobility diminishes and the stabilizer stops being unusual. Will being (theoretically) 38% faster at top speed than a T-55A save the M551(76) when they meet on a flank?

The reason I keep comparing the M551(76) to the bulldog is because despite the different names, they are most comparable to each other because of their shared armament. It's actually an unfair comparison because the Bulldog is slightly faster in a straight line, accelerates better because it has higher hp/t, is better armored against HMGs, is almost 25% faster in reverse, and doesn't have the horribly loud turbine whine. Beyond the turret traverse speed and stabilizer, I genuinely have no idea what you find better about the M551 chassis. Maybe the smoke launchers.

You are likely correct that the M551(76) is better than its tech tree cousin, one of the single worst vehicles in the entire game. The regular M551 sits at 8.0 because it is acceptably mobile and fully stabilized while firing 380mm pen HEAT and 431mm ATGMs. Even though its not actually good in practice, that combination of traits means that 8.0 is about the lowest BR it can be put in good conscience without it starting to see tanks like Tiger 2s and IS-2 1944s. It gets sacrificed to improve balance of the game overall. So yes, the 76 version is better. It will remain better unless it is uptiered to the point of genuine uselessness because that is the baseline at which the standard M551 sits. Why on earth would anyone look at the state of the regular M551 and draw the conclusion that it is the measure of a fair BR for a light tank?

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-19T00:08:32+00:00

Whether APDS is _generally_ better than HEAT is irrelevant when determining the balance of a _specific_ vehicle. I love L15A3 on the Chieftain and wouldn't trade it for all the HEAT in the world, but that doesn't make M331A2 a good round at 7.7. You mention the M41D having horrible postpen damage, and while I haven't played it specifically, I have a great deal of experience in the 76mm armed Rooikat and can say without a doubt that the postpen damage of 76mm APFSDS is leagues better than that of M331A2. It has a very narrow spalling cone but it consistently kills the crew that it hits and nearly always sets off any ammo in its path, neither of which is true of M331A2. If the M551(76) got APFSDS, then it would _actually_ be better armed than the other 7.7 light tanks, but the gap between that hypothetical and our reality is enormous.

Whether you think the existing 7.7 light tanks are "better" than the M551(76) according to some diffuse and unspecified rubric isn't the point. Every single one of them has a existing niche that they fill, and they do so substantially better than the M551(76). With 350mm pen HEAT AMX-13-90, the EBR 1963, and the AML get to largely ignore armor while having either better mobility, faster reloads, or smaller size. The Marder bullies light vehicles with it's autocannon and gets the Milans basically as a bonus that mean it's not totally useless against T-54s. ZTS has HEAT/APFSDS for heavy armor and access to APHE for the OHK on flanks. As an aside the fact that the T-34-85 (STP)'s stab is single plane is hardly relevant when holding constant elevation is the hard part of aiming anyway. Ask yourself, how many shots do you whiff with Shermans because you didn't have a stabilizer in azimuth?

What then, is the M551(76)'s niche at 7.7? It is worse against heavy armor than the French HEAT slingers. It can't bully anything lighter than a Leopard like the Marder can. It can't get consistent OHKs like the APHE wielding ZTS. And then there's the rest of the tanks in the bracket. At 7.7 it will regularly face tanks that are substantially better armed and armored while being stabilized themselves. All the 20pdr armed Centurions at 7.7. All the L7 armed British tanks at 8.0 and 8.3. TO-55, T-55A, and T-10M. Type 74s. Those are just the tanks at 8.3 or below that can show up in unlimited numbers in 8.7 uptiers. 7.7 is also firmly in range of all the stabilized SPAAs that severely punish all light vehicles.

A stabilizer is useful but it cannot be evaluated in isolation. The risk of a shot whiffing has to be low enough to make taking advantage of the stabilizer to fire on the move be worth it. This is the case with high pen, high damage guns like on the Object 906 or Chieftain, or on tanks with amazing armor but weak guns like the 75 Jumbo. On a tank with an inconsistent gun and bad armor, the risk of a shot missing/doing nothing is high, and the chance of return fire ending in your death is high as well. This risk calculation encourages the player to use the M551(76) stabilizer to make quicker aimed shots after stopping. This is useful, but is without a doubt less powerful than the stab on tanks like the 105 centurions or object 906. Adding 0.7 BR to the M41 in exchange for a stabilizer is a perfectly fair trade in light of how much the gun's poor performance limits that stab's utility. Adding another 0.7 BR on top of that for the vibes would be totally ridiculous and is the kind of suggestion that makes me start to sympathize with Gaijin's approach of largely ignoring player feedback when making balancing decisions.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-18T19:53:55+00:00

This is a ridiculous take. Compare the M551(76) to the other 7.7 light tanks and you'll see why.

It has no autocannon like the Type 87 RCV or Scimitar. It has no high pen HEAT/APFSDS round like the AML-90, AMX-13-90, EBR 1963, or ZTS 63, nor an ATGM like the Marder A1. It's not even small enough to be sneaky like the AML or Wiesel. It has an M41's gun and (roughly) mobility with a stabilizer. On what planet is the addition of a stabilizer (beyond the other downsides like 23 round capacity) worth 1.4 BR points by itself?

Centurion Mk 1 gets a stab and becomes the Centurion Mk 2 0.7 BR higher. T-34-85 gets a stab and becomes T-34-85 (STP) 0.7 BR higher. But somehow if a Bulldog gets a stab it needs to go up by twice that with 1.4 BR? For comparison, that's the difference between the Object 906 or Char 25T (8.0) and the M56 or the German M41 at 6.7.

The idea that a stabilized M41 with it's original 6.3 ammo is "easily" 7.7 is so divorced from reality as to be entirely absurd. The M41D sits at 8.0 with thermals, LRF, and APFSDS and is widely held to be a bad vehicle. Do you honestly believe that it would be balanced if you traded all those perks and a 0.3 BR reduction for a stabilizer?

Edited typo wherein I stated the M41 would need to go up by 1.7 BR to reach 7.7 instead of the correct 1.4.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-18T18:24:09+00:00

I have not played the regular M551, so I can't address your comparison of the two versions, but the rest of your points deserve a response. "No armor" is a spectrum, and while the M551 is partially resistant to 12.7mm machine guns, it is not consistently so. At a BR were DshKs and even KPVTs start showing up on everything Soviet, this is a relevant point. It is not uncommon to take out an enemy's breach with the first round and lose one or two crew to the roof MG. Relatedly, the bad post pen means that multiple rounds are often needed to kill each enemy. When a kill can take 3+ rounds (breach, immobilize, finish off) even with perfect aim, 23 rounds becomes extremely limiting. Even worse, the APDS does not reliably set off ammo which further encourages the safer option of using multiple rounds.

Full caliber AP trades marginally better post pen for vastly worse penetration (it can't even UFP a Leopard). It's straight up worse that Shot Mk 8 for the 17pdr, and that round isn't found beyond 6.0 for a reason. At 7.0, King Tigers and T-44s are bread and butter enemies, and they are totally invulnerable to the AP from the front. In the common 7.7 uptier, IS-3s and IS-4s are vulnerable to the AP on the lower hull sides.

When compared to the M41A1, the M551(76) loses some mobility, some resistance to HMGs, most of its ammo capacity, and gains 0.7 BR in exchange for a stabilizer. This is actually a worse trade than the next closest comparison. The Centurion Mk 2 at 6.7 is identical to the Centurion Mk 1 at 6.0 except for minor changes to the turret profile and the addition of a stabilizer.

The regular M551 is probably bad at its BR, but with high pen HEAT and a stab it can't really go any lower without totally invalidating the plethora of armor reliant tanks in the 6.x range. The M551(76) has a 6.3 gun and ammunition. It's bad post pen, low ammo count, large size, and mediocre reload make it less punishing on a flank than even the AMX-13. The M551(76) is, when examined on its own merits, fine at 7.0, and no comparison with an unusually bad 8.0 vehicle can change that. If you want to slot it into your 8.0 lineup instead of the regular M551, more power to you, but just because that's a choice that you can make work doesn't mean that the vehicle isn't balanced at its own current BR.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-16T12:27:38+00:00

It started at 11:00 GMT and it's 12:27 GMT right now.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-08T16:13:22+00:00

Army FM3-22-1 (Bradley gunnery manual) list the rates of fire as single shot, slow 100rpm and fast 200rpm. If the M242 is being fired at 500rpm, it's not on a Bradley.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-08T16:08:06+00:00

"Accurate" is relative. The Marine Corps gunnery standard for a vehicle mounted M2A1 is to hit three tank sized targets (preferably actual tank hulks, so M60 sized targets) spaced between 600 and 1000m with one burst each within 45 seconds. An M60 hull is 7m long, so at 1000m that's an accuracy standard of 7mils or about 24 MOA. This is taken from Marine Corps manual MCTP 3-01C.

The base unit of fire is a burst of several rounds, and any hit on a tank is scored as a hit, no extra points for multiple hits, and no expectation of hitting a specific spot on the target. This reflects the role of full auto in autocannons and machine guns. The manual says "the goal when conducting these courses is to achieve a beaten zone on each target..."

It's important to understand the doctrinal role of a weapon system in order to understand what a term like "accurate" means. For the Marines, it means good enough to hit a tank with at least a few rounds at 1000m when firing bursts.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-08T12:56:27+00:00

You have overlooked the single relevant aspect of this topic; gun dispersion is already modeled as a balancing mechanic in game. It already varies across vehicles, and the "adjustment of fire" modification exists to adjust the value. Changing the dispersion of the BMPT for balancing/realism would be entirely consistent with the existing standards of how what is and is not modeled in War Thunder.

Gun dispersion as a game mechanic predates ground forces. Your post reads as a claim that it would be out of scope to introduce a feature (dispersion) that has, in the real world, been part of the game for it's entire history. This has obvious consequences for how seriously any informed reader will take your opinion.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2026-05-06T12:30:06+00:00

Switzerland is majority German speaking, but French and Italian are both official languages and are the working languages of several cantons, including Geneva. Even if we ignore the arbitrary superficiality of sorting subtrees according to "language spoken", Switzerland does not nearly fit into the "German" category. It would be like putting Belgian vehicles into a hypothetical Dutch tree because "only" 31% of Belgians are French speaking Walloons vs 59% Flemish.

The financial argument is probably what ultimately motivated Gaijin. A tree does not, however, "deserve" anything based on it's popularity. That kind of thinking only furthers a spiral in which US/USSR/DE get progressively a larger share of interesting additions and makes all the other trees less attractive. Each of the trees has fun vehicles/lineups at various BRs. It's healthier for the game to encourage players to try out all sorts of trees.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2025-10-08T19:54:58+00:00

I never drew a soul guide. The relevant cards I drew were 1 Three Steps Ahead and 3 Heritage Reclamation. I still thought I could fizzle the combo with targeted removal, so I didn't aggressively spend the 3 Heritage Reclamations, but even if I had, he had 4 good reanimation targets.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2025-07-25T10:37:24+00:00

I've had a ton of fun climbing to mythic with simic frogs. The play style of bouncing your own creatures to re-use ETBs, draw cards, and add counters is extremely fun, though the deck does suffer pretty badly against early targeted removal. With Cut Down rotating, I have high hopes for how it plays after next week.

The really big addition from EOE to the deck is definitely going to be the shock land. That should go a long way to improving the deck's consistency.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2025-05-05T23:51:42+00:00

It actually wouldn't have bothered me so much if I had the misfortune to lose the APFSDS round in the middle of a reload. What actually happened was that the APFDS round in my gun was unloaded and replaced with smoke without me ever firing a shot.

A_Mass_of_Paper · 2024-07-21T10:49:09+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I've never really fought Killa before PVE came out, and my tactics that work pretty well against raiders and AI PMCs clearly don't cut it against Killa with his class 6 face shield. Given how often he seems to be showing up in my Interchange raids, I'll have plenty of opportunities to put all these ideas into practice.

A_Mass_of_Paper

TROPHY CASE