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Having seen D_M_G's threads, I decided to compile a complete collection of all the tier 8 vehicles in a thread of the WotLabs style; this took me quite a while. My ratings are very subjective, and, due to the extreme number of vehicles in the tier, quite short, but I hope you enjoy anyway.
Ratings are done in the style of WotLabs.
Please leave comments and suggestions below!
AMX CDC - Easily the worst tank in its tier, being mostly worse than the Dracula a whole tier lower. Capped at 57 kph for whatever moronic reason, with a mediocre T8 medium gun and HE-able armor, while also managing to be as large as a Tiger II, the CDC is truly spectacular...ly awful.
Kfpz 70 - Easily the best tier 8 heavy tank stat-wise, the Kfpz 70's largest flaw is its weird matchmaking, which puts it in tier 9 and 10 battles for whatever reason.
Centurion 1 - Jesus Christ, just get a Pershing instead. Big as a barn with trash hull armor *and* a frontal ammorack, a unreliable turret that you have to constantly show to blast your peashooter against heavies that do literally 3x the damage per shot you do, poor speed - why?
T28 - The T28 tries to be a little T95, but the mediocre frontal armor and appalling side armor prevent it from really performing. The terrible mobility and limited gun arc prevent it from even employing its gun effectively - and when you do manage to get a shot off that pens, you only hit for 400, so why not just bring an IS-3 instead?
AMX AC 48 - Like a T28, but a bit faster in exchange for gigantic tumors on top and even worse side and rear armor. Get a turret, kid.
O-47 - Tier 8 Mediums aren't in a good place in general due to the extremely strong HT presence in this tier, and a unique looking but mediocre stat-wise tier 8 MT is likely to be near the bottom. If you want a meh gun and meh mobility, bring a Type 59 for the armor or a Pershing for the gun depression and turret.
AT 15 - Unfortunately, all the pros of this tank are massively counterbalanced by weaknesses. The best-in-tier DPM is compensated with miserable alpha and worst-in-class penetration, requiring you to stick three or more shots into a enemy when any other TD could hit once-and nobody is dumb enough to sit in front of a AT 15 like that, meaning you have to try and take the fight to them with your atrocious 20kph top speed. Your '228 mm thick' front armor and wide gun arc should make this possible - except that your gun mantlet of all things is the biggest weakspot on your tank, and numerous other small weakspots exist, assuming they don't have the penetration to simply blast through your strongpoints. Ah, mid tier British vehicles, truly a life of misery.
AMX 50 100 - While once dangerous in the hands of a unicum, the 50-100's lack of bite with only three 100mm shells means that it no longer is relevant. The huge size, long clip reload and poor armor of the tank make it unable to play the front line, meaning your noob team mates will get eaten alive by the time your second clip is ready.
AMX 13 90 - There isn't much of a role for armor-less scouts right now, and the 13 90's piss-poor gunstats and worthless clip mean it is the least effective out of the tier 8 lights.
KV-5 - While funny (what tank's armor gets stronger when you drive it backwards??) and a decent side-scraper, the gigantic weakspots on the front of the tank and the awful gun make this tank a sore thumb in a tier full of well armored, well armed heavies.
Glacial 112 - "We didn't even scratch them!" the tank. The gun was poor originally, but with the HEAT nerfs, the gun is basically worthless. The armor is okay; the extremely strong UFP and frontal turret along with decent side armor for sidescraping give it usable defensive armor, but the butter lower plate and the big cupolas combined with the poor mobility mean that the tank is inflexible, destined to sit in a corridor and bounce and miss shots while sidescraping until it finally is surrounded and killed after its team dies.
Ferdinand - the best of the terrible brick TDs at this tier, only because it has a big whopping gun and can't be HE penned from the sides and rear easily. Unfortunately, everything else will be penetrating your sides and rear, because the Ferdinand is slow and turns like... an Elefant (badum tss).
SU-101 - "Why is my aiming circle a quarter mile above the enemy?" Unfortunate, since the gun and armor are decent and the mobility is really quite good. However, in a game where teams disintegrate in seconds, a inability to actually use your gun if so much as a speedbump is on the map is unforgivable.
Caernarvon - Heavy tanks need armor and alpha to succeed, or else they must have a special X factor. The Caernarvon has nothing. Although it manages to claim best-in-class DPM along with 10 degrees of gun depression, its pitiful alpha damage forces you to penetrate at least two shots for every one that the enemy penetrates you with, a difficult job when every 45%+ player knows by now to take cover after firing. Furthermore, the gun stats aren't all that great, and the frontal armor suffers from both lower plate (with a frontal ammorack!) and forehead weakspots, while the side and rear armor are extremely poor, leading you to get tracked and damaged simultaneously and HE penned respectively.
T69 - The best 'fast' autoloader in tier, the T69 has remarkably trollish armor along with the fastest aim time in the game, which allows it to actually aim its second and third shots. However, the small burst and poor penetration limit its potential severely.
VK 45.02A - Brings a below average gun and relatively poor armor to the table in exchange for... what? It's hardly faster than a IS-3, and will be vastly less effective than one when it gets there. The extra speed and mediocre armor, however, give it a bit of a niche in raping medium tanks, so at least it's not unemployed like the above tanks.
KV-4 - The heaviest heavy tank at its tier. All this extra weight, however, seems to have been applied to armoring the sides and rear along with making the tank as long as a battleship. The front armor is at best unreliable, and the turret suffers from large flat sections that can be penetrated (though not super reliably, and not by tanks without 200+ pen). The armament is better than many heavies at the tier, being essentially a Tiger II gun with nerfed handling and DPM, but the appalling mobility leaves it as a largely obsolete relic.
FCM 50t - A CDC with armor, but now even slower. Being able to leverage your armor is really useful once in a while though.
STA-1 - A Pershing that trades all its armor for a slightly better gun. Worth it? Not really, but the gun is probably the best of the tier 8 mediums, and allows the STA to put up some serious damage if played right.
T49 - Although funny, the ridiculous module damage that made the T49 effective originally no longer exists, and the T49's long reload time means that it has a hard time doing critical things like taking the hill on Mines, instead specializing it into a hit and run role - but a lot of the time, by the time you can hit and run people, the game has already been mostly decided.
Jagdtiger 8.8 - With the addition of the new 10,5 cm gun, the name "jagdtiger 88" is a bit odd. Bringing the decent Tiger II hull with the strong Jagdtiger casemate and a high-DPM, precise gun, the JT88 can rack up some serious damage if it can find a position on the front lines and hide its lower plate.
Tiger II - decent hull armor and a fantastic gun make the Tiger II more suited to second line support than as a true heavy, as the unreliable turret armor prevents your armor from working well. You eat constant damage from anything with a 122+mm gun, as the 40mm turret roof is a major overmatch zone - watch out, or you'll be outtraded by a KV-1S!
IS-2SH - Easily the worst of the IS-tanks (showing how good they are on average), the IS-2SH has trollish armor and the standard derpy APCR-122. However, the rear-turret is exceptionally annoying to use, and Wargaming's love for giving Rear-turret tanks turret weakspots manifests here in the cheeks, which are easily penetrated frontally and negate much of the armor's value. The APCR-122 is not exactly the greatest weapon anymore, as its atrocious handling, accuracy, and reliance on HEAT to penetrate anything with significant armor neuters the effective DPM.
Indien-Panzer- I don't agree with D_M_G on this one honestly. The poor mobility and gun handling for a Tier 8 medium along with the absolute worst weakspot, a mantlet hole, and extremely low HP make this tank not all that great. High DPM, 10 degrees of gun depression, HE-proof/trollish armor, and the ability to actually penetrate targets keep this tank from being outright bad.
T26E4 Super Pershing - Rounding out the PFF division, the extremely unique T26E4, technically a Medium tank, possesses Tier X Heavy levels of hull armor along with a decent gun with great APCR and -10 gun depression. Unfortunately, all that extra armor makes the tank very slow, and the hull MG port and (facing it head on) the left-side cupola along with the miserable side and rear armor make the tank softer than one would like, considering how much better armed the other 'heavies' at tier are.
Type 59 - A Chinese Copy of a T-54, the Type 59 has a relatively poor gun (even worse than the T-44), which is enough to drag it down to this level, and prevents it from attaining a perfect combination of mobility, firepower and armor. The hull armor is enough to bounce most medium guns (such as its own) with a slight angle, and the turret is the standard Chinese/Russian mostly-immune dome.
Panther II/Panther 8.8 - functionally similar (the P88 trades armor for a touch of gun handling), the Panthers' excellent firepower and gun handling give them a strong role as fire support and bully mediums. However, they are relatively slow and large, and their armor will not hold up to any real firepower. The ahistorically nerfed penetration hurts (Wargaming used the 30-degree pen numbers rather than the flat ones).
IS-5 - attempting to create a faster, better armored IS-3, the IS-5 trades slightly better armor and speed for one of the derpiest APCR-122 guns in the game. The high speed combines with the terrible hull bloom to make the aiming circle as large as a small country, ruining your ability to abuse your mobility and scoot and shoot.
M6A2E1 EXP - Strong front armor, a powerful 120mm, -10 gun depression, and massive size. However, the tank has miserable DPM, and the turret is massive but has a turret ring weakspot. The tank becomes a pinata as soon as both your hull and turret aren't pointed straight at the enemy.
RU 251 - High mobility, a pretty good gun with high DPM and great handling, and light tank vision control. On the other hand, it has HE-able armor and weird E-50esque gun depression angles, and the AP has poor shell velocity while the HEAT lacks penetration to deal with some of the heavier armored vehicles.
T28 Prototype - who knew a turret was worth so much? 10 degrees of gun depression and a turret along with quite good frontal armor give the T28 the ability to set up shots, play with ridgelines, fend off flankers, substitute for a slow heavy, etc in exchange for just a little firepower compared to the T28 (which can't use it nearly as well as the Prot). The extreme slowness and miserable side and rear armor are still present, however, and the turret can't fully rotate and is quite slow, allowing extremely fast tanks to circle-jerk this tank as they would any other TD (but at least you won't get circled by heavy tanks anymore).
Rhm-Borsig Waffentrager - Slow, with some of the worst armor in the game and a incredibly long reload. What's up? A 150mm gun with a turret, making the Borsig the king of support firepower. Although the gun has recieved nerfs, the Borsig's camo and turret let it set up and execute its massive 640 alpha blasts and retreat into cover relatively unmolested.
ISU-152 - with one of the most notorious guns of all time, the 152mm BL-10 'trollcannon', the ISU's raw firepower exceeds even the Borsig. The tank's moderate mobility and somewhat trollish armor give it far better survivability and flex power than the Borsig, but the lack of a turret means that it is basically tied with the Borsig.
Lowe - despite supposedly being less-well armored than the Tiger II, the Lowe has a far better distribution of it: The turret is exceptionally strong and trollish, and the upper hull armor remains quite strong (let's not talk about the lower plate), while the sides and rear are stronger. The gun is even better than excellent 105 on the Tiger II, with better penetration, gun handling and DPM.
IS-6 - once a top dog, the proliferation of well armored tanks has made the original gun totally worthless, taking away the IS-6's formerly exceptional DPM. The replacement gun, the terrible APCR-122, has 50% more turret bloom and miserable DPM. The IS-6's armor is quite good, able to achieve 200+mm of all-round protection, but in exchange it lacks the glorious IS-3 mobility, which isn't really all that great of an exchange. Not being quite as good as an IS-3 isn't exactly the most serious of condemnations, however.
T-44 - With the increase in armored tanks combined with gold ammo nerfs, the T-44 has fallen somewhat from its peak. Extremely fast and decently armored and packing a relatively punchy 100mm gun, the T-44 is the logical continuation of the T-34-85. However, the relatively poor penetration, ROF and DPM even for the extremely poorly-armed tier 8 mediums keeps the T-44 out of the top ranks.
T-54 Mod 1 - Basically a T-44 with 50% more armor, and all the goodness and problems that come with it. A tank that can't penetrate itself with its own standard ammunition, the 54 mod 1 carries relatively weakspot-free, reliable and strong wedge armor. The weak vodka-powered engine can barely keep this tank faster than IS heavies. Carrying the same 100mm as the T-54-Lightweight and the T-44 but without the speed to flank anything or set up sneaky shots to alleviate the horrible penetration, the 54-mod 1 must rely on trying to bully lightly armored vehicles in order to put out its damage, though its absolutely stellar performance in this role lends it this position on the list.
T32 - The king of hull down, with 300+mm of turret armor and 10 degrees of gun depression (though the turret does contain a shot trap and a somewhat weak roof), the T32 brought me 71% win rate when I played it. That being said, the mediocre hull armor and mobility hurt its flexibility, and the derpy and weak gun dampens your ability to put out damage.
M26 Pershing - I consider this tank juuuuust barely good enough to make the Purple Division, being the best of the quite poor tier VIII mediums. The tank is a great all-rounder, with decent mobility and armor. The biggest advantage of the Pershing is its good gun handling combined with a tough turret, massive APCR penetration and 10 degrees of gun depression, allowing the Pershing to play as a 'pocket T32' and giving it a reasonable chance against heavily armored vehicles.
T34 - Once a trash tier tank that would make it at best into PFF, the buffed T34 has the major advantage of extremely high penetration along with a turret and non-trash accuracy, allowing it to put out damage at medium range with far greater precision than the derpy 122mm cannons. The pretty strong turret (though with far weaker cheeks than on PC, and at this tier you start running into tanks that can simply blast through your cheeks or even gun mantlet) with only a trollish cupola as a weakspot combined with 10 degrees of gun depression allows the T34 to hull down to great effectiveness. The tank is pretty slow and has terrible hull armor, so stay in cover.
T-54 lightweight - this is what the T-44 wants to be. The only light that isn't overly vulnerable to HE-pens, the 54 lightweight has the classic russian wedge layout with a reasonably strong turret. The gun is that of the T-44, with slightly better DPM, while the tank is exceptionally fast and agile.
IS-3 Defender - Once, this tank would have ranked at the very top of the list, but the increasing ineffectiveness of the APCR-122 means that the Defender has fallen somewhat (showing how OP it once was). The autoloader works wonders with team support, allowing you to put two or even three massive 122mm shots into a enemy for each shot they can return and protecting against being 2-for-1ed by mediums; the reload isn't exactly bad either, giving the Defender comparable DPM to same tier heavies. The IS-series speed and a even more trollish IS-3 hull (though the extra plates show up on the armor skin now) along with more gun depression and a smaller turret weak spot than the IS-3 cement the Defender as a great tank.
Jagdpanther II - This is what a SU-101 wants to be. Fast and quite agile, with decent hull armor and a near-impenetrable superstructure, a JPII with hull cover is a true terror to behold. The punchy 128mm has the best gun handling of the big guns in tier. These combinations allow the JPII to be a flexible terror, turning the tide on the medium lane, sniping from the back, hull-downing in the heavy area, or even circling slow tank destroyers.
IS-3 - the cherished instrument of Russian Bias, the iconic pike-nosed IS-3 remains king of the battlefield. High speed, a high penetration, relatively accurate 122mm, and pretty good armor. The sides are notoriously trollish, as the upper part is spaced and reverse-sloped while the bottom ends earlier than one may expect, while the turret is extremely strong but for a overmatch-able roof.
Edited by conjay810, 18 October 2017 - 05:54 AM.
. Its a great tank!
My favorite is your KpfPz 70 listing. Nice job...that one was funny 
. Very interesting to see the strengths and weaknesses of each tank.
