WoT: The IS-4 & The KV & The 7.3 Changes

I've been playing World of Tanks since closed beta, since July 2010 to be exact.  If I've successfully backwards-engineered my player profile page, I was the 5,148th accepted closed beta tester.  I went through all of the betas, restarting each time.

I focused on the German tree.  I am currently only 2 vehicles from completing/eliting the entire tree.  My point?  Glad you asked.

The two ancient nemesis of the me are about to go through the most significant changes since evar! in the game since they were in the game

I'm talking about the IS-4 and KV:

An IS-4
The only information for this picture states, "Soviet post-war heavy tanks"

A KV-2
Similar to the iconic "KV" in World of Tanks, pre 7.2

As a German-centric player, I have to say: I have loathed, feared and hated these 2 vehicles.  They have been my bane.  The IS-4, I simply hated to face, in any German tank, at any tier.  Even in my Maus or JDT, when one is about to fire on me -- and I cannot stop it or get away from it -- I say to self, "this is going to hurt."

The IS-4 has an incredible gun, the 130 mm S-70

This was basically a naval gun, modified for field and tank usage.

Entitled: "Here's a Guide To The Military Qaddafi Is Using To Crush His Own People"

(The Wiki states this gun did not show up until the IS-7)
World of Tanks Forum Discussion on the 130 mm S-70 Gun utilized in the IS-4

The coming changes will move this tank to Tier 10, with no more S-70 at Tier 9 in the replacement to the IS-4: the IS-8.

Likewise, the KV of World of Tanks, is like the IS-4 just discussed: great, horrific, predators of a Pleistocene battlefield, praying on the herbivores of German and US tanks.  Soon to be relics of a museum, with onlookers wondering how they used to behave, what they ate, as they peer upon their hulking skeletons.

The great 152 mm M-10 Gun of the monstrosity known as the ... 'current' ... KV, shook the hulls of all around it when it would let out its bellowing roar.  It became _the_ "derp" of the game, and forever will hold that moniker.

The KV, soon, will be moved as a KV-2 to Tier 6, and the KV-1 will get a 57mm gun.

Yes, the great roar of the "derp" will still be heard, but never again at Tier 5.  How those leviathans prowled the battlefields at that tier, eating other Tier 5s and lesser tiers.  Always, they tilted the balance.

It is soon to be a new epoch in World of Tanks, as we say goodbye to these titans of the battlefield, never again to be seen again in their original tiers, with their original guns.  We shall never again have, at Tier 5, the 152mm "derp" or, at Tier 9, the 130mm finger-of-god.

Yes, I finally got me a KV, and did play it a bunch, but only late, and only after many, many ages of facing it in my German tanks and tank destroyers.

As a former opponent of them, I salute.  It was a gg....

-FKD

More IS-4 and KV pics: