Of SU-76i Once More

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Hello everyone,

by now, you are surely already aware of the fact that SU-76i was removed from the shop. Hmm… why do I keep writing SU-76i, when it’s SU-76I? Bad habits I guess. Anyway, right – about the removal.

There are bits and pieces we can put together.

It took cca 40 hours to collect the SU-76i statistics on Russian server – essentially, the Russians had it 24 hours longer than us (their patch came one day earlier). From what I can tell, first feedback that it was not such a bright idea started arriving to the developers after a few hours of the patch day. The vehicle appeared in somewhat large numbers on its tier and Yuri Pasholok noted around noon on his blog that the vehicle might be overpowered (he reports 100 percent winrate in 14 battles), at which point he likely contacted other WG developers, who in the meanwhile started realizing what happened and started paying attention to the vehicle statistics.

Allegedly (according to anonymous WG source), SerB didn’t approve the sale (he doesn’t have to, it’s a marketing thing) and when he heard they put SU-76i into the shop, he raged the entire evening.

According to various sources from supertest, the vehicle itself was tested in many rounds (various sources state 7 or 8 rounds), the testing of this vehicle ended in February 2014. Other earlier iterations with it were however reported as well, so it is estimated the vehicle was tested around 11 to 13 times. How the hell did they miss the fact that it’s imbalanced, noone knows (personally, I believe the developers KNEW it was imbalanced, it was a miscommunication between producers (marketing) and developers).

In any case, the next day (when EU got it), it was decided to remove it, at which point the supertesters (for some reason) recieved a letter from Nikolay Galihanov (External Testing Manager), saying they shouldn’t post anything about the SU-76i on the forums and that they should delete the old posts about it. In the evening, it ended with Storm admitting the entire fuckup. I do believe one of the factors was also the fact that from today for several days (three I think), there is a big Wargaming developer meeting on Cyprus and that the developers wanted this settled before they depart.

At this moment, there are two options what will happen:

- a nerf (with gold refund the was it was done with Superpershing)
- nothing, it will just stay removed from the shop

One thing is for sure, it won’t be decided until next week.

72 thoughts on “Of SU-76i Once More”

        • Please WG do the second option “- nothing, it will just stay removed from the shop” muhahahaha, but i’m only saying that because i was lucky and got one ;)

            • i was lucky if they don’t put it back into the ‘type 59′ style…
              oh and btw i don’t mind paying WG occasionally for a game i enjoy playing.

          • @Jaegeroo: So you payed for a tier 5 premium that will be nerfed in next weeks – congrats to your wisdom.

    • It can pretty much two shot anything of it’s tier and has a fast reload. Mobility is adequate and front armour bounces a fair amount of tanks.

      It’s basically a pre-nerf Marder II with a little armour stuck on.

    • It has very good armor for it’s tier, okayish mobility and good top speed + the combination of ROF and Alpha-damage, which gives it many advanatges over the tanks it meets.

    • = MM. Normal tier3 vehicles, even good ones, are a pain to use because of so many battles where the enemy team has 12 tier 5 tanks. So not only do you get tier 5 too often, but the amount of tier 5 tanks is overwhelming. The fact that many maps had sniping spots removed and were changed to brawling maps didn’t help tier 3 either. If SU-76l had normal MM this would not be an issue and it would still be in the gift shop. Pz S35 for example is overpowered as a tier3 tank, but no one cares because the tank is useless in tier 5 games and those are plenty.

      A tier 3 tank with smm has to be really really bad (on a level of Combat Car / TOG / VIC) not to be overpowered, because smm offers an enormous advantage over normal t3 tanks. Imagine if KV-1 was always top tier – that kind of thing.

      • I REALLY want one, even nerfed.
        Give it normal MM so it faces more Tier 4 and Tier 5 and we’ll see

        • Im one of the lucky guys that got the SU-76i. I’m not a great player I have 21k games and I have average stats, I have played about 70 games with it now and have a 57% win rate. Is that OP ?
          Yes I do see what they are saying about it being OP but what about the many other OP tanks in the game like the KV-5. Its no more OP in tier 3 than the KV-1 is in tier 5. or the KV-2 at tier 6. I have been killed lots in it, There are some tanks that have problems penning it like the Pz1c But there’s many that can and do, I would personally say its no more OP than the French FCM 36 Pak 40, At least that has view range. The mobility of 50kph, lol, I have not seen 40kph with it on the flat. The gun is not accurate at long range, The idea of a TD is to shoot at long range. I think people are only doing well with it at the moment because others don’t know how to kill it yet, But they will learn, And I will get killed more.
          When I started playing with it yesterday morning I did notice that most of the other players with them, had high stats, some Unicom. May be thats why the reported stats are so high.
          I took it in to a tier 5 game to try it out, it did ok, no better than a stug or a KV-1s would do at tier 7, or an FV304 in a tier 9 game. May be the way forward is to put it up to tier 5 MM. But at the same time I have had problems with tier 4 tanks like the Matilda.
          Have a look at this replay, and decide for yourself.. I don’t think its that OP.
          http://replays.quickybaby.com/result.php?id=57077
          http://replays.quickybaby.com/result.php?id=57078

          Ape 29AR

    • PaK40 still has a better gun, more ROF, more pen more acc and better aim time.
      Mobility is still on pair or slower then the agile tier 3 TD’s. A Marder still beats me to most places even tho I’m closer. Armor… well its mantle is strong along with its large gun shield in front of it. The rest of the armor is not better or worse then what is considered high for a tier III, even the LTP and T-127 have more “effective” armor then this has. But when you use auto aim on it. Most will bounce on the shield. I hardly get hit in the lower plate in it. But its shield is always full of holes and marks. As the gun mantle behind the shield has close to or over 100mm of effective armor. Tho the structure all around is 45 to 25mm and the hull is 55 to 30 all around.

  2. Again SerB is the man :-)
    Say what you wanna say, without SerB this game will be MUCH worse.

  4. If they will leave it like now it will be end of fun play in tier 3 and4 for 95% of players – so i think nerf-hammer is comming.

    • Yea, sure, you think, that 1000000 players managed to buy the tank in those couple hours, and now all they will do, is playing that single tank for the rest of their lives to mess up Tier3 gameplay, right?
      But anyway I believe they will nerf it.

    • In 7 battles I’ve player with it I only found 1 76I else than me, doesn’t seem there are many around

    • I have one myself, and I’ve seen a total of 3 inc a 2 man platoon in the 30+ battles I’ve played in it. And still the other tier III premiums I own have better overall stats then I have in that one. Inc average XP and damage.

  5. It took me one scrolling through the stats back when barely anyone knew about this vehicle to see that it is OP as fuck, but somehow this was beyond WG employees.

  7. So much fuss about a tier III vehicle. More armor at front & sides than its regular SU 76 counterpart, view range around 17% smaller, 29% more alpha dmg, but 23% less pen…
    So what’s the problem? PZ Ic not being able to pen its rear?

    • The problem is your tomato comment. SU-76l has at least 40% better MM (the most important stat) than normal t3 tank such as Pz 1c, so the fact that some t3 tank has 23% better pen means nothing – it would need to have 80% bigger pen to even compete the way SU can.

    • It’s not only PZ I C, you can simply laugh about them. Many other tanks won’t do shit to your 76I, and if they will eventually realize to switch to gold, it will be too late, because you need 3 seconds the most to kill any tank in your tier.

    • The problem is normal su 76 is simply brushed aside by tier 5 heavies in half its games while su 76i will 2 shot the enemy team every game.

      The biggest MM disparity in the game is tier 3s facing tier 5s, su 76i having 23% less pen than su 76 is completely irrelevant when it doesn’t actually need that pen (well except vs matildas). Similarly 29% more alpha is way more relevant when the average hp of the tanks you are facing is much less as well. And more armour is much more relevant when the tanks facing you have less pen.

  12. I doubt that they sold enough of them in less than 2 days to totally break tier three. People didn’t know it was going to be rare/removed, so a lot of folks didn’t buy it according to posts on the NA forums at least.

    I played mine once last night, got a win, and didn’t take it out again. It is a fun little tank, but I don’t play low tiers much, and I had the on-track event to work on anyway. Since I’m running the on-track, I also played some games in my T18 (one-a win), and my T82 (two- one loss, one win) for the doubles. In those three games I saw one SU-76i. Granted, he wrecked face, and that was my loss, but the NA server doesn’t seem to be overrun with them. I run the 105mm derp on the T82. I hit that 76i with an HE shell, which is normally a one shot kill on other tier 3 vehicles. It did 108 damage to him, so the armor is pretty decent. He killed me before I could back off and/or reload.

  13. SILENTSTALKER:”he reports 100 percent winrate in 40 battles”
    Wrong translation! 14 battles.

  15. Pingback: Pokračování kauzy SU-76i: „SerB řádil jako pominutý“

    • You have no clue what Type-59 is don’t you.
      Almost all tier 9 tanks pwn you bad, hell even super pershing can pen you frontally if he/she knows where to shoot. Only good thing is the turret but it is also easily penetrated (if you know where to shoot and have enough penetration).
      Type shines only against lower tiers.

        • Both are tier VIII premium tanks and not even the best ones. As i said try taking on amx50 100, IS3 or even IS6. Not to mention tier 9s. So your comparison of SU-76i versus type is invalid.
          Type is hype and much inferior in its own matchmaking than SU-76i

  17. Not interested in anything below tier 5. Unless i want to go for a new branch. Even then i usualy “free xp” to tier 4 at least.
    PS. I think WG should remove all premium tanks below tier 5 so it would not encourage people to stay there… BUT thats just my thoughts.

  19. I vote for “nothing” …. leave it – own up to your mistakes and just leave it… it’s not like Tier 3 will break the game in some cataclysmic way in the first place, and for the NA server at least, it wasn’t even announced – it just appeared, then disappeared from the gift shop without a notice.

    • im a lucky bastard lol i got one and omg the metals holy dung the metals that rain on me and masterybadges xD

  20. SilentStalker,

    Do you remember WG claiming that the reason that new tanks were sold through the shop and not initially available in-game was so they could refurn if there was an issue?

    If they refund gold, someone can claim it’s unfair as they had no wish to buy gold at that time.

  22. >SerB didn’t approve the sale

    Meanwhile Storm dissagrees :^)

    How bad of a idea will be to take out the special MM and just put it back on sale anyway?
    (full tomato here)

  23. So people are making a huge fuss about a seal clubbing tank ? Only newbies and noobs play low tier.

    Oh, and Cruiser IV is much better. 4×50 dmg @ 64 pen + great mobility.

  24. The SU-76I is not OP at all.

    It was pretty obvious what was happening if you played on RU during those first few hours – i.e. there were many high-stat players testing out the SU to see if it was any good for seal-clubbing. The games were full of players with 20-60k games driving this thing, vs the usual crop of helpless 0-1k games tomatoes.

    No wonder the SU stats looked crazy in the first few hours.

    The problem is the maturity of the game; i.e. the fact that many players have vast amounts of experience and multi-skilled crews, and use this to seal club/stat pad.

    The SU is actually quite slow and ponderous, and the gun is quite poor at sniping. Its not bad as an assault gun in a semi-aggressive role, BUT, it is easily killed by a true OP TD such as the FCM pak. Even anything with a proper gun can flank and kill it quite easily – but Pz1Cs can’t do much except rage…

  25. Well, shit happend, but at least they noticed it quick enough to still be able to act. Not like with the Type 59 back then.

  26. On the SEA server there are a few but nothing to worry about as the players who bought them could not hit a cow in the arse with a shovel. Yes, people with a WN8 score of 3 own them…