I just unlocked the KV-1 Zis-5 victory day reward and it made me play the tank again. Sadly a Tiger 2 from BR V obliterates it easily and your 76mm cant really shoot back from the front, but when you get into a fair BR-IV match with it, it is so fun to play. All the tank needs is to stay away from BR-V.
Give it a try!
And it looks insanely cool in my opinion too! Just like out of a movie:
Those who complain about it only complain about vehicles one br higher… but it’s true of all vehicles and quite normal.
to be “good” a vehicle doesn’t need to overpower the next br, but the vehicles of the br it’s classed at. Among br4 vehicles, it’s great. Pretty fun too.
Except there’s one thing, 4BR plays against 5 on KD. It’s rare to get a 4BR against a 4BR. And let’s compare the KV-1 Zis-5 with its 4BR tank, the Panther. The KV-1 Zis-5 can penetrate the Panther’s armor-piercing shell into a machine gun nest, for example, but it can’t just shoot at the silhouette and kill. The KV-1 Zis-5 can load a sub-caliber shell with high penetration, but the sub-caliber shell has low damage. What about the Panther? Panther literally kills KV-1 ZIS-5 in frontal armor, it does not even need to aim much unlike KV-1. That is, one 4BR tank (KV-1 ZIS-5) must either hard to aim, or charge shells with low damage, while the other 4BR tank (Panther A or G) is able to penetrate the KV in the frontal armor with a normal armor-piercing shell with normal damage and without aiming pixels. That’s not fair, don’t you think?
Jumbo cant penetrate both Tiger and Panther, while being immortal to everything BUT Panther guns ( MG port weakspot excluded).
So Jumbo makes Germans not play Tiger, instead they pick Panther. Jumbo is however a much bigger problem for Japs.
Zis however can take out both Tigers and Panthers, while KV1 Zis has much weaker armor than Jumbos, Panzer IV H,J can take them out quite reliably.
I don’t think they are comparable.
People already dont bring the ZIS T34 into BR3 because they are used to playing with massive post pen damage, so I bet if ZIS KV1 would be BR3, people would still stick to regular KV1.
The real issue with that tank is the extra armor which will make it immune to many BR2 vehicles.
Jumbo is also very great against lower BR tanks, but in return has very poor penetration power, KV1 Zis however has decent enough penetration for its own BR.
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