9.6 Test HD Models

Warning, this post contains a number of large pictures.

Hello everyone,

patch 9.6 is bringing a couple of HD vehicles into the game, let’s have a look at how their visual and armor models are changing. In case you can’t tell, the pictures with shiny lines on the garage floor are from the new version :)

Lowe – small upper frontal plate weakspot was removed, the mantlet and frontal turret were somewhat reshaped but overall, not that much changed actually, apart from some adjustment of the general shape of the vehicle. If anything, it looks like a small buff.

E-100 – the bar on the top of the turret became larger actually, but only by a bit, there’s the strip of armor on the UFP that is thinner, but the slope compensates for the loss and the armor is still very thick, the rear of the turret lost its weakspot.

AMX 50B – the overall layout didn’t change that much, the thicknesses remain practically the same. The turret shape is different somewhat as you can see, but given how fragile this vehicle actually is, I hardly think it matters that much.

Ferdinand – shape changes, but the armor thickness remains mostly the same.

Object 704 – the armor under the gun got nerfed a bit, now there’s not a compact thick “red zone”, instead there’s like a “sleeve”, protecting the area.

T95 – the overall model changed somewhat, this one warrants further investigation.

Tiger P – here the armor layout changed mostly on the turret. Notice the mantlet, which became somewhat weaker. But the biggest nerf is the massive hole behind the mantlet – earlier, it was rather tiny, leading to the legendary toughness of the Tiger P turret. Now, it’s quite a bit larger, so the mantlet itself will be easier to penetrate.

62 thoughts on “9.6 Test HD Models

      • Afaik T28 was just another name for T95, read it a long time ago on wikipedia…should re-fresh my memory there. Given how many proposals for a “historical” american TD line there are, WG should slowly start working on it.

        • Chefitian covered this. T28 and T95 are the same vehicle. It got the second name (T95) when the army decided it was an SPG instead of a Super Heavy Tank.

          The T28 in the game is an entirely separate (and fictional) vehicle. It’s basically an imagining of what a prototype for the T28/T95 would have looked like. The easiest way to tell it’s a fake (and not just a T95 with the outer tracks removed as some believe) is to look at the front. The T28 in game has drive wheels on the front, while the real vehicle has the drive wheels on the back and no armoured prow under the gun.

      • So, probably a Tier 8 T95 without the tracks and the 120mm gun? Because I would be ok with that.

  1. The bar on top of the turret of the E 100 did get bigger BUT when you look closely you see that the added bit on top is actually sloped backwards at an 45° angle which means the effective thickness is around 212mm if you hit it dead on and because most tanks are quite a bit smaller than the E 100 they’ll have to shoot up at it which increases the effective thickness alot (the bar is 150mm thick. At an ~60° anglet this equals 300mm eff. thickness [50°=233mm, 55°=261mm] without angling your turret!). So aslong as you angle your turret between shots this extra bit on top should not be penetrated by most tanks :)

      • The turret was made bigger, mantlet smaller – big nerf since everyone is using gold – it will be nice flat surface to hit again and pen like butter. And it is huge so no problem with new accuracy nerf.

        I guess every occasion to nerf German tanks is has to be used.

  2. When will WG get some actually skilled artists to texture these? Currently their shaders are just stupid and their textures almost perfectly clean, like you would find in a hermetically sealed lab, not on a war machine.

    • You do realize that all tanks, when manufactured, are clean? They are not built on mud. And you rarely see a dirt-covered tank outside of a battle because they are regularly maintained and cleaned.

    • That’s because the new models are still texture-less, stupid. Have you seen Tiger H in HD? It has all the dents and scratches that you will even need…

      Edit: the legendary toughness of the Tiger P turret

      Come on, we all know that Silentstroker is as tomato as it gets, but still… Nothing about TigerP turret is legendary.

      • Wrong, wrong and wrong. Whatever SS is using for those shots does not support the advanced renderer shaders and is still running on the deprecated old ones. That’s why the new textures look clean and ugly compared to the old, which were designed to look interesting on the old renderer, unlike the new ones.

        I saw a Tiger P’s turret to eat several AP shells from T30′s 155 mm gun, so…

        • Yeah I saw a ELC eating a 268′s shell? So? That means ELCs are able to engage 268s every time they fail platoon? Please…

      • I’d like to see our tanks age with the appropriate wear and tear in direct proportion to the age in our garage and battles engaged in. That would be a nice thoughtful touch.

      • No, area from mantlet to the side of the turret was larger, connected further back on the turret, and was ricochet angle. Now frontally there will be large areas to the right and left of the mantlet that you can pen.

  3. Well, SS: the angle of the UPF of the Tiger (P) seems to have changed, too. Earlier, it was 37°, not it is only 31°, making it lose 19mm of effective armor (250mm to 231mm).

  4. The Tiger P’s turret has a legendary thoughness o.0 ?I never knew it had it.For me,the Tiger P’s turret can be easily penetrate by the T29 gun as long you dont hit near the gun mantlet.

    • Yeah with 200 pen you would probably not notice…

      But it is true, with 150-175pen you cant actually be sure to pen Tiger P turret, unlike the Tiger H turret. Even with my 112/111/122-44 i would rather shoot the big cupola instead of risking a bounce on the mantlet…

  5. The E 100 turret looks wider and the gun mantlet more narrow, giving more area to slap a HEAT shell into.

  6. Im having so much fun watch WOT go down in flames.

    We get 4 new models, that are improvement yes, over the the original models. But are very dated and rather piss poor compared to WT.



    Absolutely stunning




    slight difference in quality

    • so WoT is going down in flames because a tiny minority of the playerbase is not happy with the visual models of tanks. Yeah, flawless logic.

    • So, you’re comparing a Maya-rendered, pre-optimisation beauty shot to a in-game implementation of a three year old model? This is supposed to be proof that WoT ‘will go down in flames’. Are you really trolling, or just that much clueless?

    • You can’t use the screens here for comparison – they are from Tank Viewer, which has been abandoned and doesn’t support new HD shaders (I think it ignores or misinterprets at least one, maybe two files in the current models).

    • You are a clueless troll. Would you like to talk about WT’s realistic “moon buggy” physics? I served on tanks for 20 years, and I can definitely tell you, no they do not move like WT thinks they do.

      WOT has nothing to worry about from WT. Hmm, I remember an old saying that applies to WT ” you can polish a turd, but in the end, it’s still a piece of shit.”

      • I too am a army vet 1-12 Inf. 3rd Brigade 4 ID Ft. Carson CO. 11 years on M1A1. And this is a comparo of models there Dan Rather, with top notch reporting of facts, not physics.

        Watch who you insult.

  7. Goes far beyond that and you know better. The new British TD line, what wasn’t a direct cut and paste, was either worse than the basis tanks or generally sub par vehicles.The panther 8.8 and t-34-85M fiascos
    The BT-SV money grab. Havok, E-25 money grab. Oh the new state of the art primiums coming. what else….Do I need to go on?

    After almost 3 years and a lot of great memories I see a game I loved really start to self implode.

    • The “Archer” and “Charioteer” are great performers per tier, and well worth keeping. You prefer the old glory days of the “Churchill GC”? :(

      Premium tanks are not to be OP. They make money and train crews. I agree that the recent pricing was a mistake. Otherwise this “fiasco” began with the crappy “Matilda IV” how long ago? (three years). I have it. It’s garbage, but it trains my future T-54 crew and makes money. I wish I had a T-34-85m instead, but I can’t afford it. I don’t care how it performs; it would have to literally catch fire and explode at the beginning of each game to be worse than the Matilda IV.

      After doing the math, it came down to “Would you buy gold for normal price and then pay 1000 gold for a BT-SV?” I almost did for Christmas. I really want that tank, and I feel the price was acceptable. (Ultimately I spent $100 US for 2 packages; 12k gold and 6 months premium, which does more for me in the long run). I still want that tank, and would still spend 1000 gold for it, but I no longer have $100 to blow.

      The E-25 money grab I only sorta agree with you about. It allowed people to get it while there was time. *I* have a Type-59. It seems that many people want one. I bet many people would buy one if it was available, and if there was time.

      Wait… How much time?

      If the E-25 was simply pulled without warning, people would be PISSED. “I was going to get it but it was pulled!” So if warning must be given, are you nit-picking the amount of time they allowed? What if people needed to wait for payday to get it? Is 3 days too little? Too much? How about a week?

      Fuck it. A month is fine.

      WG actually SELLS THINGS FOR MONEY while letting us play this for free. The “money grab” is a frenzy concept created by us, and perpetuated by us. They played on the psychology of “Get the E-25 before it’s too late and be COOL!”. Fine, but they didn’t say, “Buy the E-25 or you don’t get to play any more!”

      Many people don’t think the E-25 is OP, and many do. I just hate the people who drive it, because they are either inept idiots on my team, or people who actually know how to use it on the enemy team. :P

    • What exactly do you feel is wrong with the T-34-85M? It is exactly what it is billed as, a slightly more armored, slightly less mobile T-34-85 with the non-elite 85mm gun (which is almost exactly the same as the elite gun on the Type 58). It is a perfectly good tank, basically equal to a Type 58. Does it struggle against tier 8s? Sure, but just about every tier six does.

      Call the BT-SV a money grab if you like, but no one was forced to buy one. For someone who was planning on spending $100 on gold anyway, it was a good deal, 1000 less gold for a fun tier 3 premium, a 100% crew, and a garage slot.

      E25, there was no “good way” to remove the E25. Wargaming decided it needed to go, so they did it the way they did. Don’t remove it right away and they get accused of greed, remove it right away and they get accused of blindsiding the player base. How would you have done it?

      The new British line has some good tanks in it. The Sherman III is basically just an M4, but the M4 is a solid tank, so that isn’t a problem. The Firefly easily has the best tier 6 medium gun, great pen, fast ROF (faster than the Black Prince and AT-15A in fact), passible mobility. The Achilles is a solid TD, very similar to a Jackson, but with less alpha and more pen and faster ROF. The Charioteer is solid, great gun, reasonable mobility. The Conway isn’t really interesting, not bad in its own light, but doesn’t offer anything you can’t get elsewhere really. Still, nothing wrong with it, and unlocking it unlocks the top Tortoise gun for free. The tier 10 is a dud, as evidenced by the lack of people free XPing to it, but something has to be the most useless tier 10. Haven’t played the Challenger, so I can’t comment on it, and who really cares about tiers 2-4?

      The Panther 8.8 started badly, but Wargaming made it cheaper and either refunded the purchase price or compensated people with gold. It could have been done better, no doubt. I’ve only played it on the test server, and it isn’t that exciting, but there is nothing wrong with it. If one wants a good German medium crew trainer it wouldn’t be a terrible choice. I don’t expect to buy one, but I already have several German premium mediums, and I’m hoping to get the T-55A.

      Havok. Not sure why everyone is so excited about this, but I’d rather see it delayed than come out and be sub-par.

      Many of the new premiums look pretty good to me, AMX CDC, AMX 13-57, IS-5, etc. Sure, some of them are likely to be stinkers, like the STA-2, but no one is forcing anyone to buy any of them. If they don’t sell Wargaming is likely to adjust them to make them more appealing.

      There have been what I consider to be pretty major derps, but that happens. First, the SU-76i really was a fiasco. I have no idea how it happened, but I was lucky enough to buy one during the brief time it was offered. Still, it was a big derp. The Personal Missions, while I like them a lot, are plagued with bad descriptions/poor translations. Really, how hard would it have been to make sure that the requirements made sense in the languages they were translated into before release?

      So yeah, I guess you do need to go on.

    • IMHO the Panther 8.8 and T-34-85 are great tanks. i love them to bits, and don’t really see what should be wrong with them. T-34-85 plays kind of “Sherman Jumbo” style (would love to see all those enemy players’ faces when they try to penetrate my hull, thinking it’s the same one as on the T-34-85), and Panther 8.8 is (again, IMHO) better than Panther 2. yes, it has less mobility, less armour, but mobility was never a reason to play Panther 2, armour is good-for-nothing on it as well, so practically no (or very small) drawbacks. the gun, on the other hand, is even better than the Panther 2 one. and it trains my E-50M crew, earns credits, and, mostly, i’m having a lot of fun playing it.

  8. So, E100 got a bigger turret and smaller mantlet. Much easier to pen at any distance now.

  9. what in the hell did they use to drill those holes in the E-100′s gun? rusty nails? is that what they call “HD tank models”? well done, guys at WG, outstanding job.

  10. Really anyone thing that the e100 gun mantlet was strong? compared to the rest of the turret it was almost flat. mantlet is only 250mm eff in most areas, when turret face is ~280mm eff. in my t110e4 I have about 50/50 chance to pen turret face and 80% for the mantlet.

  11. Pingback: WoT 9.6 test server HD tanks changes

  12. Is it just me or did the UFP of the Ferdinand get a little bit of extra slope to it? I certainly hope it did as my poor Ferdi has been suffering a bit from power-creep. Even a small increase can significantly increase it’s durability e.g. Tiger II vs E 75 front hull.

  13. why is everyone complaining about the e100 turret having a smaller mantlet? its not like people missed the big flat spot before.and why would the e100 get the same turret as the maus? the one thing the maus has over the e100 and people think the e100 should get it? seems logical