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I've been playing World of Tanks for a little while now and have got to the KV-1 which, now that I have the top gun, seems to be miles ahead of every other tank I've played. Is this what people call the 'Russian Bias'? Are the higher Russian tanks as good as the KV-1 or is this the best it gets?

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  • This question appears to be offtopic since it is primarily opinion based and cannot be based on objective arguments.
    – BadSnowflake
    Commented Jan 3, 2014 at 17:35
  • If you want to know if there's actually a difference in the code, please specify that.
    – Fabian Röling
    Commented Jan 29, 2018 at 8:30

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Win rates don't tell the whole story. As you've seen there are certain tanks which are pretty much overpowered, or rather there are certain tanks which play the way you'd like them to while everything is is pretty much sub par.

Each nation of tanks tends to have certain strengths:

  • American tanks tend to be fast, have well armoured turrets, and be accurate with a good rate of fire but low damage
  • German tanks tend to be the most accurate but lack in penetration and damage
  • English tanks tend to be either fast and poorly armoured or slow and reasonable well armourd with very high rate of fire guns but do very little damage
  • French tanks have great guns but lousy armour. Also their low tier tanks are rubbish and their high tier tanks are good
  • Russian tanks have fast, well armoured tanks with big slow guns that have good penetration

While that sounds like a pretty balanced set of tanks the game design tends to favour certain aspects over others:

  • Due to the mechanics of the penetration system slope of armour is as important as thickness. Almost all Russian tanks have good sloped armour whereas only some tanks, mostly higher tier from the other nations have good sloped armour
  • Due to the size of the maps (500m x 500m) tanks that are short range brawlers do better than sniping tanks. Most Russian tanks are brawlers rather than snipers whereas the other nations tend to have tanks better suited to sniping
  • Most fighting between tanks is around hard cover using a peekaboo technique. Tanks with a slow rate of fire and high damage are preferable. Most Russian tanks have a low rate of fire with high damage whereas most other nations have a high rate of fire with lower damage
  • You gain experience and credits mostly via damage done. Tanks that do more damage per shot are better for this. Again Russian tanks favour this aspect
  • There are a number of factors that are have no representation within the game like the comfort of tanks, quality of crew training, reliability, communications, quality of materials, and so on. This tends to favour the Russian tanks as well

So, put simply, there is no obvious Russian bias, but adding together many small factors does show that Russian tanks are the best suited to the game design overall.

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    The only problem with your theory is that it disagrees with observation and is therefore false.
    – kotekzot
    Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 16:56
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    So that's a no then. My entire point is that win rates, especially global win rates, by which the developers balance the game, are not an accurate measure of how one nation's tanks perform
    – A Pale Shadow
    Commented Dec 26, 2012 at 7:32
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    At the very least the global win rate does not take into account number of players per nation and their relative skills. Russian tanks are already seen as overpowered and thus all the 'noobs' flock to them. Global win rate is a flawed measure which is typified by the Chinese one being so high.
    – A Pale Shadow
    Commented Dec 26, 2012 at 13:10
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    There's a second set of numbers on the statistics thread (forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/…) where loss/winrates are only taken into account of players who also play a tank in the same class/tier. This "Stats for each tank II" section gives a better comparison taking into account relative skills of players. The stats also shows that there are more players playing more battles with German low tier vehicles, than Russian low tier vehicles so it doesn't seem to be true that all the noobs flock to the Russian tanks.
    – Xenox
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 16:16
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    @Xenox and most new players will end up starting to unlock either German or Soviet tanks because they're conditioned to think of either the Tiger or T-34 as the ultimate tank.
    – jwenting
    Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 13:12
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No, it does not have a Russian bias. The reason behind the claim of a Russian bias is that the developer of world of tanks is a company from Belarus.

However, when looking at the statistics of wins vs losses per country, it's clear that Russian tanks do not in general out perform tanks from other countries.

The winratio per country is currently:

  1. China: 51.06%
  2. France: 50.01%
  3. UK: 49.39%
  4. USA: 49.29%
  5. Germany: 49.22%
  6. USSR: 49.06%

(The reason for the high China winratio, is that the China tree only has premium vehicles which tend to perform better then their regular tier counterparts)

Of course there are individual tanks that outperform their foreign counter parts, but the numbers show no overall bias in favor of Russian tanks, the KV-1 is very good in its class, but for example still out performed by the English Churchill.

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    Hmmm, I'm playing both those tanks and while the Churchill appears better on paper and should perform very similar to the KV-1 it just doesn't play nearly as well for me. The KV-1 just bounces a lot of hits that would penetrate the Churchill
    – mechatankzilla
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 18:15
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    It also depends on your personal playing style, some tanks will just suit your style better than others, even when other tanks in theory have better stats.
    – Xenox
    Commented Dec 10, 2012 at 18:29
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    It's not Russian, but Belorussian. It's not a part of Russia, it's another country en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus
    – Michael Pankov
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 15:27
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    @Xenox The game did have a major problem with overpowered Russian tanks in beta (likely why people started talking about it in the first place). It was a legitimate problem with the game early on and not based solely on claims. I haven't played since beta (the game balance was broken then), so I can't say how it is now from any personal experience.
    – Lemmings19
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 6:16
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    There is NO point of winrate of any tank! When i play for example with the IS tank, 90% of the battles the enemy team also has one. That is the way matchmaking works, spread all types of tanks over both teams. You will rarely see 2 same tank models in the first team while none in the other team. You should really compare the dmg dealt versus damage received ratio. Then you will find out that artys and tank destroyers are over powered since they have lower hitpoints but higher damage output. . Winrate is incomparable to tank OP.
    – user55576
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 19:42
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Yes it DOES have a Russian bias:

  • The Russian tanks better suited to the short range brawling system of the 500x500 maps.
  • Sniping in WOT is a waste of time.
  • Check out the latest updates , they tend to nerf German tanks pretty often.
  • If there are people with >3 kills per game they 80% have a Russian tank.
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    This just comes across as your subjective opinion. Do you have any way of qualifying your statement? It's more of an angry rant than a constructive answer I think, but if you have any evidence to base your opinion on then that would improve things I think.
    – JonW
    Commented Mar 16, 2013 at 13:13
  • Concur. A little less snarling and a little more objective evidence, please.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Mar 16, 2013 at 13:42

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