Higher armour for Panthers

Click baity title.

I've been thinking lately and I'm wondering how a higher frontal armour Panther with lower HP would be in the game. Its inspired with the recent change to the KV-1 and Pershing.

OKW suffers from not having enough repair squads and repairing Panthers takes a long time especially without team support and/or sweeper upgrade.

What if: The front armour of the Panther was increased and the HP was lowered. Repair times would be shorter and the unit would have to rely more heavily on its frontal armour rather than HP pool to mitigate damage. It would bounce slightly more hits but take less anti-tank shots to kill which balances itself out. The lower HP pool which should favour it in a tank destroyer role with decent AI. Ideally this balances out late game team game Panther preservation that causes a snowball effect late because of the Panthers great staying power and late-game ability to trade effectively compared to dedicated tank destroyer units with no MG. This makes it more vulnerable to flanks and pak walls while keeping its signature high bounce rate and ability to trade well (being repaired faster for more time in combat).

I'm talking increase Panther's frontal armour to King Tiger level and lower hp pool by about 1-2 med hit(s) 160-320hp. Numbers can be adjusted as needed.

I've been thinking lately and I'm wondering how a higher frontal armour Panther with lower HP would be in the game

We had that already from 2013 to 2017 and it was kinda meh.

Panther used to have 800hp but higher armor with 960 at vet 2

High pen tank destroyers wound up just killing them faster anyway. 960 hp at least gave you a reliable chance to close the distance

What does vet 2 do? Grant even more armor?

Click baity title.I've been thinking lately and I'm wondering how a higher frontal armour Panther with lower HP would be in the game. Its inspired with the recent change to the KV-1 and Pershing.

OKW suffers from not having enough repair squads and repairing Panthers takes a long time especially without team support and/or sweeper upgrade.

If we're trying to emulate what the Pershing changes do (faster repairs, but over-all same combat effectiveness), the approach would be to keep the armor the same, lower the HP, and add a flat damage reduction modifier to it to counteract the HP Reduction. The damage modifier means the HP is effectively unchanged, despite being numerically lower, so the result is that the combat power is exactly the same as before but its faster to repair.

Increasing the armor but reducing the HP would actually be quite a nerf, since Allied "60 range" TDs already effectively ignore the armor on it; so it would just lose to those quicker.

Over-all, I don't see the need, though. By the time Panthers arrive, you should be able to afford detectors on Sturms and additionally, T2 gives you a permanent repair squad; those two combined can repair a panther (or anything) really quickly.

We had this years ago. What we have now is far superior.

Besides could you imagine the collective mind melting if patches notes said "increasd panther armor to 375 but reduced HP to 800"? People lost their minds when panthers got accuracy buff last patch. You would've thought it was the end times for CoH2.

As others said the old panthers had this and back then Panthers was pretty bad.

High armor low hp is a nerf anyways since the only thing that really matters in vehicle combat is whether or not the last hit goes in.

Since damage reduction from armor is binary it follows binomial distribution and so there will be scenarios where all shots penetrate and destroy the tank, whereas if it had higher HP instead it would be guaranteed to get away with a sliver of health.

WRT to reducing the repair time to damage ratio: reducing HP, and increasing damage reduction is how you would do it. It's why the KV-1 does so well. It doesn't trade amazingly well in a single fight, but it needs far less repair time over the course of 3-4 fights.

This is simply a bad idea.

Right now Panther is getting penetrated by Allied TD 9 out of 10 times. Increasing armor wont solve anything, maybe will raise this numbers to 8 out of 10.

It will be a big nerf if you lower its HP.

If you ask me the solution for the current allied TD problem for the OKW should be fond in the jp4. it needs to trade its armor for higher ROF

If you ask me the solution for the current allied TD problem for the OKW should be fond in the jp4. it needs to trade its armor for higher ROF

It ROF is fine. The problem is the cost and POP.

If you ask me the solution for the current allied TD problem for the OKW should be fond in the jp4. it needs to trade its armor for higher ROF

JP4 is already the most cost efficient TD counter just becaue of its higher RoF. JP4 beats every allied TD in 1vs1 situation. I wonder why noone uses it but me.

JP4 is already the most cost efficient TD counter just becaue of its higher RoF. JP4 beats every allied TD in 1vs1 situation. I wonder why noone uses it but me.

I use the JPIV a lot, too. It's fantastic against enemy TDs and against Mediums, it's only against Heavies that it can be a little inconsistent. That's also why I often make use of Elite Armoured; HEAT shells make the JPIV a fantastic damage dealer.

Older day. Panther was 320/110 armor and 800HP. And 352/121 armor and 960hp at V2.

That was clearly OP so relic made it to 260/90 armor but buffed to 960HP at V0.