Developer Diary: Second CATTB Nerf
Commanders!
The Spirithaven PTS is available for a while now and you’ve had the opportunity to see the upcoming Update 0.31 with your own eyes. It brings plenty of new features, but also some adjustments to the existing ones, including vehicles. And few are as discussed as the upcoming nerf to the performance of the top prize of the Last Patriot Battle Path, the CATTB Tier 10 Premium Main Battle Tank. In today’s article, we’d like to tell you more about the changes coming to it.
First things first – let’s take a look at what’s going to happen with it in Update 0.31. Here’s an excerpt from the 0.31 patchnotes concerning this vehicle:
At the risk of stating the obvious – these changes are being introduced to somewhat reduce CATTB’s performance because CATTB is overpowered. This is a fact that is very likely obvious to anyone driving this tank and significantly contributed to CATTB’s popularity (extremely high popularity of a vehicle is a good first indicator that something is not right).
Our intention is not to nerf it to the ground, but to introduce some weaknesses that would break this tank’s stranglehold on high-Tier gameplay that it currently enjoys.
To do that, we took a look at the global issue with the MBTs that were introduced lately. One of the issues that were often discussed last year was that of the power of ATGMs. Simply put, high-Tier ATGMs were a little too powerful and in our effort to balance the situation, one of the things we did was that we made new MBTs too resistant to HEAT shells. This in turn made high-Tier ATGMs mostly obsolete in PvP (save for very special cases like the Javelins or the kinetic ATGMs), but – as a side effect – it also made high-Tier HEAT ammo quite useless.
In CATTB’s case, what we got was a tank that was impervious to most threats because, apart from its intended excellent protection against kinetic rounds, it also got the “standard” (also excellent) anti-HEAT protection of its Tier and class and that was, quite frankly, a bit too much. The solution we decided to implement is therefore to make it weak against one particular warhead type – yep, you guessed it. That would be HEAT. As such, this vehicle still offers excellent protection but has to beware incoming HEAT projectiles and ATGMs, which makes it – again, intentionally – an excellent anti-MBT tool, but worse off against other classes.
Even with these nerfs, the vehicle will be far from defenseless against ATGMs anyway:
As for the other adjustments – they are more of a trade-off type. Ready Rack behaves somewhat differently than a standard magazine, offering sustainable firepower (unlike a clip). The Zero In ability compensates for one of the tank’s main weaknesses and makes it less of a one trick (burst) pony.
We hope that you will still enjoy your excellent CATTB tanks despite these necessary changes and, as always:
See you on the battlefield!
The Spirithaven PTS is available for a while now and you’ve had the opportunity to see the upcoming Update 0.31 with your own eyes. It brings plenty of new features, but also some adjustments to the existing ones, including vehicles. And few are as discussed as the upcoming nerf to the performance of the top prize of the Last Patriot Battle Path, the CATTB Tier 10 Premium Main Battle Tank. In today’s article, we’d like to tell you more about the changes coming to it.
First things first – let’s take a look at what’s going to happen with it in Update 0.31. Here’s an excerpt from the 0.31 patchnotes concerning this vehicle:
- Reduced the protection from HEAT projectiles (kinetic projectile protection remains the same)
- This vehicle now has a Ready Rack mechanism
- Reload time between shots increased
- The current active abilities (Overdrive, Rapid Fire) were replaced by the Zero In ability (increasing the reload speed and camouflage at the expense of mobility)
- Reduced hitpoints from 3750 to 3650
At the risk of stating the obvious – these changes are being introduced to somewhat reduce CATTB’s performance because CATTB is overpowered. This is a fact that is very likely obvious to anyone driving this tank and significantly contributed to CATTB’s popularity (extremely high popularity of a vehicle is a good first indicator that something is not right).
Our intention is not to nerf it to the ground, but to introduce some weaknesses that would break this tank’s stranglehold on high-Tier gameplay that it currently enjoys.
To do that, we took a look at the global issue with the MBTs that were introduced lately. One of the issues that were often discussed last year was that of the power of ATGMs. Simply put, high-Tier ATGMs were a little too powerful and in our effort to balance the situation, one of the things we did was that we made new MBTs too resistant to HEAT shells. This in turn made high-Tier ATGMs mostly obsolete in PvP (save for very special cases like the Javelins or the kinetic ATGMs), but – as a side effect – it also made high-Tier HEAT ammo quite useless.
In CATTB’s case, what we got was a tank that was impervious to most threats because, apart from its intended excellent protection against kinetic rounds, it also got the “standard” (also excellent) anti-HEAT protection of its Tier and class and that was, quite frankly, a bit too much. The solution we decided to implement is therefore to make it weak against one particular warhead type – yep, you guessed it. That would be HEAT. As such, this vehicle still offers excellent protection but has to beware incoming HEAT projectiles and ATGMs, which makes it – again, intentionally – an excellent anti-MBT tool, but worse off against other classes.
Even with these nerfs, the vehicle will be far from defenseless against ATGMs anyway:
- The turret is still strong, you can hide your hull behind terrain
- You can use the hydraulic suspension to angle your hull to become less vulnerable
- The vehicle also has excellent smoke grenades and APS
- The sides with ERA also offer excellent resistance to ATGMs and you can use those to deal with incoming fire
As for the other adjustments – they are more of a trade-off type. Ready Rack behaves somewhat differently than a standard magazine, offering sustainable firepower (unlike a clip). The Zero In ability compensates for one of the tank’s main weaknesses and makes it less of a one trick (burst) pony.
We hope that you will still enjoy your excellent CATTB tanks despite these necessary changes and, as always:
See you on the battlefield!
