One might make witty remarks about the russian tank harder to penetrate from the sides than frontally.

In fact, the side hull armor is thicker, 160mm, compared to the 140mm upper glacis. Moreover, the upper side has slope, and it is practically invulnerable by anything below 200 avg pen. Add significant side angle for the impact and it becomes an invalid target.

The lower side hull…Well, that is another story to tell. Despite the small running wheels, the shell-eating potential of the tracks and suspension are immense. Guns over 160 avg pen can take it, on a good day and the under the best circumstances (closely vertical impact angle, higher than avg pen roll, medium range tops). But don’t blame it on me, if the suspension somehow absorbs the shots ouf our fancy Tier10 gun…If you want sure penetration, try to hit the thin area right  between the tracks and the upper side hull.

Front armor scheme updated to 7.5

You have received a “mail” into your postbox…

The former classic weakspot, the drivers’plate AKA the infamous “postbox” has changed from 160 to 200mm armor. All we had written about the ST-I it is valid here. There are four parts of it, the roof as a target is invalid, it autobounces. The three frontal triangles (well, sort of…) the driver’s plate are made of are pretty good at bouncing Tier9 tank guns. As a general rule, depending the actual hull position to the opponent, always that part is vulnerable, which is are closer to the vertical.

This means, against un- or just moderately angled IS-4 we shall aim at the middle triangle, otherwise we have to choose one of the two smaller triangles on each side.

Thank for RandomGoddess, it’s logical and clean, and it behaves that way ingame. Even a Tier10 gun can bounce, if we don’t hit the right part of the DP, but one can say, other parts of the armor are much more grateful for such a gun.

160mm armor for the upper front hull?

Judging from the forums, the still 140mm upper front plate left many players disappointed. They probably expected WG to raise it to 160, just like it happened with the “shoulders” (front side hull/FSH for us). On the second thought this might be a reasonable choice on the developer’s part. From what we have seen about armor, slope and such this far, 160mm armor with 60 and over degree from the vertical slope is too much even for Tier10 guns.  There is such armor in the game, the upper front plate if the E-75, 260mm effective ingame armor, and it’s notorious about bouncing just anything with a little angling. So unless we want to give a lolstomping machine to a certain percentage of the WOT-population, the UFP of the IS-4 should remain the same or receive more minor adjustments. By the way, the Tier10 IS-4 will have the same UFP thickness and slope in 7.3 as the ST-I, both 232mm effective vertical armor in WOT terms.

Angling and the IS-4