Hello everyone,

there seems to be some confusion about the announced removal of battletier 12 in 8.11 (on Tuesday), so I’d like to shed some light on the issue. Personally, I was just as confused as you are, but in the end, I think I understood what the developers meant by this and it is a pretty elegant solution indeed.

For starters, what does it mean for tier 8 tanks? Will they meet tier 10′s more often? The answer is “no”. Balance-wise, it means absolutely nothing. Why does it mean nothing? Well, because there is this rule that a vehicle has to be spread equally over battletiers, that trumps everything else. In other words, it is a game mechanism that you will spend equal amount of time on all the battletiers. Keep in mind that this rule does work over your entire tank statistic, so “streaks” of you at the top (or bottom) are completely possible (I better say this before anyone starts moaning again about “rigged” MM). By the way, remember that “famous” post by a developer, where he said the better you play, the worse MM you get? Yea, that’s garbage, it was debunked several times even by Storm.

Let’s have a look at the tier 8,9 and 10 battletier spreads.

Removing battletier 12 will mean two things. First, it’s a de-facto buff of tier 8 light tanks, their MM spread will be limited by one, which means the time they spent on that battletier will be distributed to the (easier) battletiers. Second, as I said, it means nothing for tier 8 vehicles (they won’t get any worse MM), but they will get shorter queues.

You see, tier 8 is very popular. Obviously there are the “grind machines” (tier 8 premiums), but tier 8 is also the first tier, where you spend a significant amount of time playing a vehicle. In short, there are many of those tanks in the queue and that caused long tier 8 queues on Russian server. I haven’t noticed the same issue on EU server, but it can happen I guess.

So, why are there long queues on tier 8? After all, there are tons of tier 8 tanks in the queue, let’s just match them together, right? Wrong. This is where the even battletier spread rule I mentioned above works against you – yes, there are tons of tier 8 tanks waiting in the queue, but all of the waiters are not waiting on free server space or whatever, they are waiting for tier 9 and 10 tanks, because even spread rule forces them into hightier battles once in a while. So, the reason of tier 8 waiting queues is not the abundance of tier 8 tanks, it’s the lack of tier 9 and tier 10 tanks so to say.

Now, why would tier 10 tanks be missing from the tier 8 queue? Simple. They have their own extra battletier, battletier 12 (those battles with tier 10′s only plus a few tier 8 scouts? Yea, that’s battletier 12). This is their “own league” no other tier can touch and by removing it, you “free up” all those tier 10 tanks, that would otherwise be occupied on battletier 12, to be mixed in with the tier 8′s. Again, please keep in mind that this does NOT mean you will see more tier 10′s in your tier 8 tank (even battletier spread rule!), it means only that the tier 8 waiting times will be shorter due to the influx of tier 10 tanks, for which the tier 8′s were originally waiting.

Please note two things:

- it is also a de-facto buff for tier 10′s (one less MM tier spread)

- it however does NOT mean it will be impossible to see a battle with tier 10′s on both sides only, these will however be more rare