Although I agree that Premium ammo should be removed, I disagree with other things you say.
To start with, you should always treat the sides of your turret (where the stars are) as penetrable anyway. The Pershing has a pretty good gun and it is perfectly possible that he did so with standard AP rounds.
Also you are massively exaggerating how good premium ammo is. Yes it is more likely to penetrate, but it can still bounce and you generally cannot get away with using auto-aim with it as it will most likely still aim at a well armoured part of your target and still bounce.
Fundamentally I agree that premium ammunition should be removed, but if it has to be in the game then having it purchasable by silver means it is as accessible by all players, not just the credit card bunch. This is much fairer in random battles and I have personally only seen it rise by a small amount since it was introduced in 8.1.
I think premium ammo should be removed, or at the very least it should be doing 1/2 damage so you sacrifice dpm for penetration.
Premium ammo effectiveness varies from tank to tank. Lets take the German 88mm L71 @ Tier 8. Penetration is 203 vs 237 (AP VS APCR). That's quite a small difference in penetration (16.75%) and that's one tank i honestly never bother carrying premium ammo in, its barely making a difference and the gun is already very accurate anyway, so weak spots are not a problem.
Now we take the Type T-34. 112 vs 189 penetration (68.75%). That is a massive difference. 112 pen against a lot of t6 stuff would be a bit iffy, but with premium ammo you can frontally pen most t8 heavies and even some t9 heavies. That is way too over powered.
Lets move onto the Object 268. 303 / 450 penetration (48.51%). So not as big a jump here, however 450mm of pen is ridiculous. I've seen videos from a thread on the wot forums of a 268 auto aiming various tanks to death using premium ammo. Most tanks are not like this but its still silly.
Regarding premium ammo bouncing. Prime example of this is the Maus.
In the Beta, the only tanks that could pen you was T30, IS7/IS4, ISU/704 & JT. Things like the T34 and German 128mm guns could, but it wasn't easy to do that. Felt like the Maus was a beast (albeit with the buggy damage to the mudflaps)
These days, there is way too many Tier 10 tanks. Before you would get 2 - 4 t10 per game where as these days its often 5+ and the rest with t9. All with uber high pen guns / premium ammo. Sure you can angle the Maus and it will bounce a lot, but there is a lot of stuff that will pen you with no problem. No sloped armor on the side is a real problem. You are sacrificing everything for your armor, speed, agility, camo. The Maus has gone from one of the best t10 tanks (imo) to one of the worst. You now get penned far more than before (I think win ratio on EU server for Maus dropped 2-3% when premium ammo was purchasable with credits).
They finally buffed the front of the turret to its historical value which stopped tanks auto penning the cheeks. But its still at a major disadvantage. I think the gun is decent, but really feel it needs either a pen buff or a rate of fire buff.
I really wish they would remove gold ammo and remove all the silly uber pen guns. I also think Tier 10 TD's & Mediums shouldnt have been introduced.
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