Storm recently made a post on the developer blog. Here’s its translation:

I’ve read another whine letter:

“ANSWER ME WHY DO YOU NERF IS3 I SPENT MONEY WHY YOU NO COMPENSATE I AM NOT HAPPY. YOU NERF IS3 WHY!!!! WHY DONT YOU NERF FOCH AGAIN! I AM STILL WAITING. TWO PATCHES ALREADY. WILL YOU NERF FOCH OR NOT. I JUST STARTED LEVELLING IT….”

(SS: the letter continues, broken Russian, typos, all caps, swearing… absolute idiocy)

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And what do you think, what should we do about necessery nerfs and and changes based on documents, describing historical armor, that appear all the time?

Silentstalker: I can’t blame developers trolling and being tired of such bullshit. Storm is asking, what players think of the nerfs, the discussion is very large, here are the pieces of info he says in it:

- after the Japanese branch, there will be quite a long pause in adding new regular vehicles, only small numbers of premiums and various event tanks will be implemented, just a few pieces per patch
- the danger of OP vehicles according to Storm is that they eventually replace other vehicles of its tier in battle and the game loses its diversity, current diversity is sufficient. Storm on introducing OP tanks: “A tank is introduced, everyone slowly learns about it and random battles on its tier are slowly dominated by this tank. There is no diversity, interest drops, it’s bad for everyone and fucked up in general”
- models being reworked for new graphics? “I can’t say”
- there is no historical E-75 side armor: it was never defined anywhere, the tank was just a concept
- apparently, Storm gets such idiotic letters several times a day
- Zlobny in the comment section, commenting on Foch: “I will nerf it soon *diabolocal laughter*”
- Storm and Zlobny confirm that pre-nerf tier 5 derp HEAT spammers were OP, they were nerfed because they distorted the gameplay
- Zlobny on 105mm derp HEAT nerf: “It was a fix of the role change of certain configurations of some tanks. In the beginning, the 105mm howitzers were quite unpopular on tier 5 tanks until the implementation of gold shells for credits, that changed their role completely. We just returned them to their old role, so where’s the nerf?”
- regarding Marder 2 gun and viewrange: “the vehicle was fully reworked and not nerfed”
- Storm states that real vehicles, that have documented armor, have it historical in game (with exceptions), while “paper” vehicles, that did not have the armor even defined (SS: E-75) or were never built have the armor as a balance parameter (SS: for example, E-75 was nothing more than a Tiger II, simplified and streamlined for production), if a vehicle has a historical armor and this armor is proved to be different (for example by finding other documents), then the armor can be changed to new historical values (the Superpershing case was however simply a mistake)
- a player suggests “nerfing” vehicles by simply changing their economy (increasing repair costs, decreasing profitability). Storm states that this is a “pay to win” element and it is wrong approach. Storm adds that while artillery profitability (SS: or was it repairs? unclear) was nerfed at some point, it was to bring arty profitability to resemble other classes, before it was too profitable
- related to previous question, why increasing repairs is “pay to win”: “Rich wallet warrior can play on an imbalanced tank without having to care about credits. Such player would constantly play imbalanced tanks, he’d pwn and have good stats. A poor player wouldn’t be able to play imbalanced tanks – he’d run out of credits all the time. A classic pay to win case.”
- apparently, chaning vehicle armor have really strange effects on vehicle balance, sometimes it doesn’t change the stats at all
- making a micropatch is not easy apparently, there are lot of things that interfere with it
- the feedback (SS: from Russian players), gathered about maps, is being used in future map development
- Map Steppes will be reworked, “corridors” will be added
- Wargaming made IS-3 model after paper specifications, because on three different vehicles they measured, they found various armor thicknesses and angles, sometimes very significantly (SS: this is not unexpected, wartime and post-war Soviet tank industry worked with huge margins of error)
- IS-3 hull armor scheme will be changed further, specifically the side thickness on some parts was 100mm (current 90mm) and the angles are somewhat wrong
- there might be a tier 10 TD rebalance: guns with 850 alpha might be nerfed to 750 alpha, with the DPM remaining the same (ROF buff)