Premium Ammo Rebalancing

Premium ammo has always been one of the hottest topics in World of Tanks and over the upcoming year, we’ll make a key revision to the entire mechanic.

Current Situation

Earlier this year we took the first step towards rebalancing Premium ammo by removing the ability to purchase ammo and consumables for Gold. Therefore, the terms "Premium ammo" or "gold ammo" are no longer appropriate – let's call them collectively “special ammo”.

We’ve been waiting for the amount of “special ammo” in World of Tanks to decrease and for players to adjust to the new concept. Just to be clear, let's start off with the key reasons for rebalancing.

Players choose their ammunition based on what’s happening on the battlefield . When it comes to high explosive shells, these tactics are justified. We all know that these shells are almost always guaranteed to cause damage, but this damage is usually much less than the damage dealt with standard shells. Basically, HE shells are used to fire on unarmored vehicles, for inflicting maximum damage per shot, or for targets that have few hit points left. In any game situation, the pros and cons of these shells are clear to everyone. Therefore, it's obvious that constantly using HE shells, while you have standard shells, is simply ineffective.

When a player has to choose between standard shells and “special ammo”, they focus only on armor penetration . Types of ammunition differ in characteristics, for example, shell velocity, but the key factor for most players is still armor penetration. Using "special ammo", most notably APCR or HEAT, you get an advantage just by spending more Credits .

What Do We Want to Do?

Our top priority is to help players choose their ammunition loadout more consciously. We want players to evaluate the advantages of different shells and take into account the consequences of their choice.

It's extremely important that, above all, the new system suits you, our players. That's why we've decided to try the solution that you actively offered in your feedback on our forum.

NOTE: We’ll reduce the damage output of “special ammo” by 25-30%, depending on the average damage of the shell, while their penetration will remain unchanged. The percentage of damage reduction will depend on the amount of damage per shot. The more damage per shot, the greater the percentage of reduction.

As a result, we are going to implement the following mechanics:

Standard AP shells are now the most attractive in terms of cost and damage . They have high damage per shot and they are cheap, but it's harder to hit armored vehicles when using these shells .

"Special ammo" is good for firing on armored vehicles, because of a higher chance to penetrate. But they come at a high cost and have a lower damage per shot (by 25-30%) than the standard shells .

High explosive shells make it possible to inflict damage with a greater probability, regardless of whether the vehicle is armored or not . They are effective against poorly armored vehicles but have low armor penetration, cannot pierce obstacles, have the lowest damage per shot in case of non-penetration and often, the lowest velocity.

What's Next?

We’ve put a lot of work into these improvements and we’re excited to hear what you think. Your input is crucial as we continue the rebalancing process of “special ammo”. If the feedback we receive on our proposed solution is positive, we’ll release it for testing and analyze how it affects the current gameplay.

If all the testing steps go as planned, we will then try to adjust the cost of all shells, depending on their effectiveness and how often they are chosen.

We are well aware that these changes will significantly affect some tanks. Don't worry, all vehicles will be evaluated individually, on a case-by-case basis!

In some cases it will be necessary to change the cost ratio or the characteristics of a vehicle, but it will be too impractical to look for a "one-size-fits-all" answer. The decision to implement this mechanic has not yet been made! We would like to analyze your feedback, so feel free to leave all your thoughts and concerns on the forum.