They greatly improved the effect of Camo Net in this patch and it now affects even large tanks that previously saw no benefit from it. At the same time they decreased effect of bushes by about 20%, so now if you want to be stealthy you have to specialize for it and give up something else. IMO it’s a great change, at least on paper, we’ll see how it holds up.
Other than a few tanks getting the usual tweaks in engine power, there were no “across the board” changes in regards to tanks’ maneuverability, speed, etc. It’s all in your head. :)
As for the armor, it’s quite opposite. Most of the gold ammo received nerfs - HEAT rounds had their penetration decreased, can ricochet now and they lose penetration if they hit screens. Sabot rounds had their normalization decreased from 5% to 1-2% (edit - of course, degrees, not percents), which results in losing about 20-30 mm of penetration at high tiers. As a result, gold ammo is much less godly now and is not a pretty much guaranteed penetration as they used to be. Heavily armored tanks that used to be next to useless (E-100, Maus) have become much much more viable, also thanks to less arty and improvements to the liner module.
At lower levels, a whole class of “derp” guns (~105 mm) was nerfed - their gold rounds used to have 150 mm penetration that allowed tanks like M4, Hetzer, etc. to pretty much one-shot enemies. Now it decreased to 100 mm, which means they won’t penetrate more armored tanks’ (KV modifications, T1, M6, etc.) fronts. I don’t have any of the low level derps in my hangar anymore, so I didn’t test it but the change sounds great.
On another hand, accuracy has been improved and it means that it is much much easier to hit stationary enemies now and not just hit them but hit their vulnerable spots. For example, even before the patch, it wasn’t recommended for the T32 to stick out their turret and just stand there - yes, the turret’s armor is awesome but commander’s hatch is very vulnerable. I was hitting T32s there before the patch and after the patch it’s even more reliable. Another example is a tank just standing there in a “diamond” position - it’s much easier now to penetrate him through the front wheel. Hiding behind obstacles is also more difficult now - I killed M103 hiding behind a corpse yesterday by hitting his rear wheel (it was sticking out), tracking him and then just hitting there repeatedly until he was dead.
All in all, there is plenty of armor in the game now but you have to play smart to use it. Stationary tank is a dead tank.
Oh and I forgot one more change. If you are on the West coast, you’ve got your own server now with much less ping, which also contributes to responsiveness of tanks, accuracy, etc. I am not a fan of fracturing the player base like that (it’s not that large to begin with) but, in the end, I guess it’s a good change for the affected people. West coast server’s ping is about 100 for me, while the East coast’s is ~30 - the difference is not huge but it is there.
