Patch 9.18 came out yesterday morning and I've been playing my beloved light tanks on it. So here are some early impressions on what's good and what's not (and what's REALLY not).
The Good
There actually is a fair bit of good in the new patch.
The reusable consumables so you can reuse your med kit, repair kit or fire extinguisher in the battle is nice. It means you don't have to hesitate to use your repair kit if you get tracked, unless you think you're likely to need it again less than 90 seconds later (it has to cool down for 90 seconds after you use it before you can use it again).
The T21, unlike most of it's fellows, actually got a slight buff in this patch. The engine got 40 more horsepower so it's peppier off the line and has a very slightly faster top speed (57 km/h now). The view range got a very slight nerf but my view range was already very good and with optics and crew training (Recon & Situational Awareness skills) I've already overcome it.
The Type 64 is a premium tank so not surprisingly it didn't get nerfed at all and thanks to the new matchmaker it got an effective buff. Which brings me to...
The best thing about the patch is the new MatchMaker. MatchMaker (AKA "MM") is the algorithm that picks the teams. In the past light tanks in particular could see +3 matches, which means your Tier V light tanks like the Chaffee, Leopard or the ELC would often end up in battles against Tier VIII tanks. The new MM doesn't allow +3 battles so the worst you'll see in those mid-tier lights are tanks 2 tiers better. That helps somewhat, and it's especially good for the T21 and Type 64...who now only have to contend with Tier VIII tanks and not Tier IX.
The Bad
The Chaffee got a couple of important nerfs. It's top speed was nerfed from 72 down to 60. It's not a total crippling blow but it's an impediment. The question now will be if the top speed nerf prevents the Chaffee from getting to aggressive early scouting positions or makes it a much easier shot in active scouting situations because it's moving slower. So far I haven't noticed a problem with active scouting but I haven't gotten the Chaffee on Sand River on one of the other prominent "dune surfing" type maps yet.
Likewise there are some advanced spots on Prokhorovka that may be hard to get to with the slower top speed, but we'll see.
The other big nerf to the Chaffee is that it lost at least 20m from its view range. That may be a little more problematic for a fast scout. Even with optics and a very good (not great) crew I can't reach 445 on the Chaffee anymore.
And this raises an important problem with all of the LT nerfs. The medium tanks weren't nerfed and now many of them have the same (or better) view range than many of the LTs. So why would you play an LT that has been speed and view nerfed when you can play an MT that is almost as fast (or faster, if you have a Cromwell), has just as much view range, better armor and a better gun. WarGaming is going to have to address that issue because it feels like the balance is off.
Is the Chaffee dead? No, it's still a good tank. But it's definitely impaired.
If you're thinking about grinding to the Chaffee...I still would. The tanks getting there are a little weak, granted, but the Chaffee is still worth it. Wish they'd give us back some of the view range, but we'll see.
The M7 got reclassified as a light tank. That means it should get the camo on the move mechanic, unfortunately while it was an agile medium tank, it's sort of a sluggish light tank. It's view range and camo aren't special and it got a hit point nerf. I'm sort of mixed on it at the moment - it's not terrible - but it's also not a great light tank. I'll keep playing my M7 but I'm not sure what my play style in it is likely to be, since it lost a bunch of hit points making it more vulnerable in the MT role but didn't really gain the speed/agility I like to have in a scout tank. So we'll see...
The Ugly
RIP to the AMX ELC bis. The forums are full of irate ELC drivers (myself included) who are grief-stricken at what WarGaming has done to their beloved little sportstank. Many people are focusing on the nerfs to the 90mm gun - it now has a longer reload, worse pen and worse alpha damage - but actually the real problem with the ELC is the new engine.
The old top engine gave you 250 horsepower. That's why the tank accelerated fast and reached 65 km/h. Now they've nerfed that all the way down to 180 horsepower. The result is a top speed of only 60 and, fatally, a 0-60 time of about 4.ever. When you press the W key on your keyboard in an ELC now very little is going to happen and it's going to take a while. It feels like you're pulling a trailer. Leaving the spawn yesterday in my ELC it was several seconds before I could pull away from some of our team's HEAVY tanks.
Where that really impacts you is that the ELC is designed to be an aggressive forward scout. Scoot into a forward position, spot, maybe take some shots, scamper away. But now you can't scamper away. In fact yesterday I had a battle where I had gotten into a forward bush and got charged by a Cromwell. I tried to press W to get away but there's just no power there...the Cromwell trampled right over the top of me, killing me, and kept going.
Very quickly medium tank drivers are going to realize that if you just YOLO an ELC you'll kill it. If he has the 90mm gun he's not only slower (because it's 1,000kilos heavier) but he only gets 1 shot every 14 seconds and no rotating turret. If he has the rotating turret it's a 75mm gun with modest stats. Just as importantly he can no longer outrun you, can't accelerate away, doesn't even traverse as fast as he used to. His armor is still weak and...hit points have been nerfed from 400 to 320, which means he's at worst a 2-shot to most mediums in the game.
My ELC is now permanently parked unless and until WarGaming sees fit to give it back some horsepower. I don't care about the gun - the 75mm in the rotating turret is fine - but the total lack of acceleration means you can't get out of trouble and in a tiny, lightly armored, relatively frail, scout tank that is fatal.
The other problem with the ELC is that you have to grind through the miserable AMX 38 and AMX 40 ("Duck") tanks to get to it. That suffering was bearable by knowing that when you finally got to the Tier V you'd get the delightful little ELC. The 38 & 40 were the price you paid for the terrific ELC. But now that the ELC is, frankly, awful...it really makes no sense to subject yourself to the French line anymore. If you want to grind a LT line do the American or German lines at this point.
If they just put it back to 225 or 250 horsepower it would probably become a perfectly good little scout tank again. Otherwise...
GLHF!
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