THE BIGGEST TURRET IN THE WORLD | M103 HEAVY TANK 

What he said at the end sums up the M103 perfectly. "It has too good of armor for conventional rounds to penetrate, so you put it at a BR where things can penetrate it thus it be not a heavy tank."

I miss the days when everything was so simple in warthunder and the fun when it comes to heavy vs heavy pure brawl

Whether it be this, the Tortoise, or the big frenchies, there's something about using full calibre solid AP that truly feels like taking a sledgehammer to someone's teeth.

Phly. Sir. It warms my parts to see you posting videos regularly again.

Gone are the days of Heavyweight brawls. IS-4, Maus, M103, and Conqueror ect.. slugging it out were a sight to behold.

About that threshold idea phly, I thought of basically the same thing but splitting trees into WWII and before, and post war. It would go 1.0-7.0(ish) then break and start at 1.0 again. Or maybe just keep counting it doesn’t really matter. This way you could balance vehicles like the R3 much easier(they would just be low tier in the second tree) and all the superheavies could brawl it out at high tier in the first tree. I doubt anything like this will happen but it fun to think about.

With all the light tanks about I sometimes even main HE on the M103 since the 120mm gun still packs quite a punch. Even managed to get a nuke with it as well!

Heya Phly, phor my phiphth vehicle request, I ask that you take out the Phrench AMX-50 Surbaissé, but there is a catch! You must *only* use HE. It should be an easy challenge, seeing as there is a 6 second reload, and the HE penetrates 39 Millimeters of Armour. Good luck, and have Phun! (Day 19)

I completely agree with the heavy tank issue in War Thunder. What's the point of having the slowest tank with the thickest armor, when there's a freaking cardboard box on wheels that fires ABHEDEPHE-TNT-C4-HEATFS with 400mm of penetration at you. It is pointless to play Ferdinand or Jagdtiger when you face post war ammunition.

honestly a 1 br gap between top heavy tanks and the things at 8.0 and 8.7 would be nice. then you won't have to fight anything like that and you are essentially the top of the tech tree. maybe centurion 10 or something could be slipped into that 1 br gap, along with a few other early post war tanks like the t-54 and such. only heavy tank i really found reliable past 7.0 is the maus and the t32 (thanks to the t32's insane mantlet). cause heavy tanks really are just slow, big targets for heat slingers to spam at.

I didnt know how much I needed you until you were gone. For years I could always expect a video every day. Then, no more. I was lost. I was a shell of a man without a daily dose of Phly. I'm glad you're back Steve.

The heavy tank meta is still fun when you play with 2 or 3 squaddies in light/medium tanks. Use the big boy to sledgehammer through the front line and use the light/medium tanks to scout, spot, and repair, with rounds ready to go for when the main man is reloading.

the m103 surprisingly actually still has some armour meta when hull down 400mm heat can only go through right next to the mantlet just it’s repair cost makes me sad and the reason the range finder is so fast is that it got buffed recently. the regular range finder that all tanks have stock became more inaccurate and the rangefinder mod got more accurate range values, more range and i believe faster range finding

There is an M103 at a museum near me and they are freaking massive. You really can't get a feel for how big they are in games, but they way bigger than like M48s or M60s which themselves are extremely larger vehicles in their own right.

In a perfect world we wouldn`t have BR anymore but curated, mostly balanced vehicle pools which can face each other during battle.

I put a talisman on this when the first Abrams was released. I grinded 2.5 million rp in two weeks with it. Not sure how it performs these days but back then I averaged about 6 kills a match over the course of those 15 days.

I think it would be better to go a step further and implement semi-historical matchmaking for Cold War vehicles. This would allow heavy tanks to do better (or at least bring it back to the pre-Rank VI meta) and eliminate other issues, like Tiger IIs fighting HEATFS and F-86s fighting R-60 armed Su-25s

Even though heavies are in a lot of ways in a disadvantage, I somehow do really well in them since they force me to play more reserved and the long reloads make me think more carefully about my shots, I often have 3+ kills in my heavies because of this

As a heavy tank main, I agree completely, heavy tanks should be able to take some abuse and only be scared of tank destroyers or getting flanked

„Watch this Sick maneuver“ still is my favorite phly moment. Damn that vid is probably from 2015… memories

I remember when the M103 was added to the game, even then it was paper to mostly anything that set sights on it, I know because I grinded out, hoping it would have armor, nah... that was the last time I played the game, up until now... now it's a completely different game, way too many new stuff, feels like I have to go to college to understand all that. I remember that I liked the T-44, I couldn't penetrate almost anything from the front, so I always had to take out the gun first and park by the enemy tank's side to blow it's ammo rack, fun times...

I've always wanted Gaijin to make light tanks the most expensive tank because they are even according to Gaijin the best performing vehicle in the game, scouting to reduce SP makes sense that way aswell. Heavy tanks the cheapest because, slow, awful reload rate and usually die to light tanks early. Light tanks made the most expensive tank would help curb early CAS spam aswell.

Astronaut 1: wait so the whole universe is pickled inside the M103 turret wish capturing the D point? Astronaut 2: allways has being

There's this m103 in Radcliff, KY, kinda rare, and you can also get inside. The drivers escape hatch is open, allowing you to crawl in. Though, I am a little to chubby to get past the drivers seat due to some rusted metal in the fighting compartment

I really hope Phly gets that bicycle he wants for Christmas 🎄

I completely agree. Heavy tanks should not be at the BRs that they're currently at. And too many tanks have very high penetration chemical rounds at lower BR as well. For anyone complaining about killing a heavy tank, go on the sides and aim for a weak spot. If that's too hard, I don't know what to tell you.

Maybe a change to the matchmaker: Heavy tanks are assigned first and the usual suspects then top-up the match if a reasonable minimum hasn't been achieved. If minimum is achieved the matchmaker then returns to normal operation to finish so there's a little vehicle variety. Once heavy tank match(es) are assigned the matchmaker then proceeds as it always did for subsequent allocations..

I could get on board with a tier match system like this. IMHO the things that made many of the vehicles in WT unique IRL are pretty much negated or make even having the vehicle in the game pointless by them up tiering them against tech they never had to face. All of these vehicles had a weakness during their service hence why they are no longer used. Requiring a bit of skill to exploit them I do not see as a bad thing.

The m103 is definitely one of the Tanks ever!

I like the idea of making heavies fun to play! Nice video, thank you!

The engineers and designers were like, "how big of a target to you want it to be"...." yes"

Fun fact, you can completely submerge your hull in water and wouldn’t drown, this is simply because the turret is so gigantic that even if the hull is completely submerged, it won’t count as drowning. So some extent, you can even go a little deep to the point that you won’t be able to use your cannon at all due to the Mantlet being in the water, hell you cannot even go into gunner sight.

Current armour meta seems to be: - uptier your armour does nothing. - downtier you are a god (when played well, with some luck mixed in). Side note: Something I have noticed is that I enjoy playing the nations that aren't from the big 3 (British and French mostly, which is solid shot galore). I will admit that I often have little to no sympathy for the "struggles" of the big 3, because the counter arguments usually involve "but this other vehicle from the big 3 has this".

The only heavy tank (above 6.7) I enjoy is the maus and I can make an exception for aphe like some some russian tanks but most heavy tanks are hard to enjoy

Hahahaha that “how dare you” in the intro is hilarious

I really wish there was a way to have armor meta at higher BRs-or just a variety of effective playstyles-but the more I try to think of a solution the more I understand why Gaijin uses statistics for BRs; it's objective. Balancing a game like this is incredibly difficult. I like the idea of having non-conventional rounds only above a certain BR or rank, but that would require acceptance within the player base that we're playing an asymmetric game that's balanced by a team's nation variety and teamwork. Based on experience, where any advantage another vehicle has is instantly cancer or bias, that feels unlikely.

0:40 nice insert there mate, really like these little details :D

Phly talking about heavy tanks and what should be done to make them more fun.... Italy not existing(Lacks a single heavy tank in entire tree)

Phly, I agree with you on the heavies, totally! And nice to see more videos again from you. Hope family is all fine!

just have BR automatically change depending on what ammo you have installed. that would also help out the grind on a lot of vehicles.

I agree with you completely about the heavy tanks

I have been saying that for a long time, heavys need a barrier that protects them to meet modern ammunitions that make them useless in terms of armor. Wish Gaijin hears you. I enjoy playing heavy tanks, but I also enjoy fighting against them, not just shoot and click, you need to think how to kill It, and that's the fun of fighting against them.

I think there should be an option to split que's and the game between during-WW2 and post-WW2. Always feels crap using a king-tiger being hit by a BMP missile

I think what would produce the battle style you are looking for Phly would be generational battles. Game modes locked out to certain generations or time periods of tanks. Tank development throughout histroy has very much so been develop new protection and defeat the new enemy, and then repeat, each generation from each power was made as a direct response to that of the opposing sides. I think this could work to some degree, yeah there will definitely be some tanks better than others but if you play the strengths of any particular tank it will still be a LOT of fun.

The 103 is my favorite tank. So glad to see you playing it again

They could make heavy tanks face only conventional rounds if the matchmaking made sure a certain number of players on each team had heavy tanks

The heavy tank meta back in the day was kinda broken though Phly, maybe you've just forgotten. Germans had nothing viable pre-Leo and the Leopards got stomped after being added, T-54's absolutely dominated the meta even pre-HFT ammo. Maus was often unkillable outside of CAS albeit slow; but wouldn't be much use when all the leopard teammates around it died in 10 seconds. British tanks should have been good but the ammo was broken so didn't pen the frontal armour of T-54s properly. IS-3 and IS-4 were actually a joke. They were unreal indestructible wrecking balls. Russia in general was the dominant nation comfortably. American tanks were a meme outside of the M-103; and it had a slow reload vs faster T-54's with short reload times. If they somehow ironed out those old issues (factoring in all the newer vehicles of that era added since) then it would be fun to try for sure.

I agree,it is really annoying when you have a heavy tank from WWII era and some 60s technology 10tons armored vehicle with HEATFS destroys you. I think it would make more sense to put the tanks into their own era and let them fight like that but that would require such a reconfig that it might screw the game up more. For example I had such a great battle in a Jagdtiger against an IS-3,we were shooting each other,hurting this and that,but nothing major,like tracks and turret. But when you are facing a BMP there is no fun.

The best part is, Armor meta wouldn't even difficult to bring back, all we'd have to do is split the tech trees between old and modern tanks, and give them both separate matchmakers. Gaijin has already done this before with the two Naval lines, so it's not even that much of a stretch.

Glad to see you back in action , i stopped playing war thunder ground , as it was disappointing being yeeted by a APDS or HEATFS etc , while i am struggling with an conventional round , my muzzle velocity is around 900m/sec theirs in 1400 , fast round equals easier aim and "higher" range , i cant even see the opponent and they have thermals , but hey i have 250mm armor and i am 45kmh fast , not even enough to retreat :D , anyway , love your videos go on and create more

playing heavy tank is like being a really jacked dude in a fight, you look like arnold back in the day, and the guy your fighting is a small normal size dude, but then he just comes in with a polaris ranger and just runs you over

I couldn't agree with you more man. I hate it when I'm in a big, slow, heavy tank and get killed from across the map by an ATGM. Or have my armor cut clean through by HEATFS, APDS, or APFSDS.

That would be badass!! Maybe even just a type of game mode for those howbwould want that! I think that's a great idea 💡

Phlys description of how the heavy tank meta should be in warthunder is why I only really play at 4.7

Gaijin has the ability to BR lock vehicles, we've seen this with the first addition of the F-104s, they couldn't be uptiered at all. If they did this with all of the legacy heavy tanks at 7.0-7.7 I think it would be fine that they couldn't see tanks above ~8.0. They could also easily buff their reload speeds. Right now the M103 sits at ~15.3 seconds with an expert crew, they could definitely bring that down to 14 seconds expert, 12 seconds aced, same with the Conqueror. It would allow them to be slightly more aggressive and able to play around the reloads of other earlier heavies and mediums as well. The IS-3 and 4 could easily get the same treatment, their armor is good for the BR, but their over 20 second reload doesn't allow them to be a frontline heavy tank anymore with all of the current 7.0-7.7 (light) tanks with HEAT-FS and ATGMs. I'm sure there are better suggestions but this was my take on the legacy heavies.

This is the earliest I've ever been on a phlydaily vid

Yeah... BR decompresson would solve that but since Gaijin won't here is another idea they won't implement: Keep them at a BR where they are in their historical period (late WWII, early Cold War), but don't allow them to be a first spawn into a game and increase the spawn points cost to something rediculuso. You would need to accomplish enough in the start of the game before you could get into a heavy. This would mimic how they were used IRL. Speaking of IRL, I've been inside a real M-103 and huge doesn't even do it justice. Its cavernous inside (without any ammo anyway). Makes an M-60 seem compact by comparison.

I have to say I appreciate you streamers who use max settings because these others are using old gpu and they act like they got skill when in fact they don't.

A simple idea, reduce light tanks ability to CAS discount. Light tanks also cap the slowest while heavy tanks cap the fastest. Also more heavy tanks on your team means less ticket bleed (i.e. tickets are like points in tonnage, the more tons your team has the less ticket bleed, while less tonnage means fast bleed)

14:18 at least it doesn't just happened to me - the vanishing tank

The M103’s 120mm cannon had so much power in it, if it didn’t pen a target, the target’s armor would be shattered to the point the next round would end the target. I wish they added proper armor degrading after each hit. Still though the M103 had the most powerful AP round even by today’s standards.

16:40 that hole out of nowhere lol

11:26 nice the most funny thing i ever see in a long time .. daam i miss this videos

I have always thought so as well. Plus 300 round penetration should not be allowed in heavy tank play. It is a rare case now when you can actually do anything with a heavy tank. It has no scouting ability it cannot call an artillery or airstrikes. It would be truly amazing and very much fun fun fun to have heavy tanks go after each other without the bother for chemical rounds being thrown at them.

You could have a generational barrier. Where tanks that were out of service wouldn't fight the tanks that obsoleted them. So it would be inter-war, ww2, cold-war, late cold-war and modern.

The fact that plane has a crater in it and continues to fly fine while others fall out of the sky from a single 7.92 round shows how broken the flight/damage models are for aircraft in this game. A total rng luckfest, why the more accurate ground models led to ground rb being so much more popular that air

It would make sense to have a BR cutoff at the 1945/46 sorta period. You can duke it out with the super heavies like the T34, Maus, IS7 etc without them being useless.

I've thought for a while 8.0 shouldn't be able to down tier or they need to expand the brs or make the br range .5-.7 instead of flat 1.0

I've mentioned many times that all they need to do is implement a filter that either restricts post ww2 (hfs vehicles etc) or allows all (basically as it is now) So at least people have a choice.

Took me so long to grind and max out the M103 without a premium account. It took me like a month of daily playing, granted i didnt go in every single match starting out with it. But i did there for awhile but still the grind is ayyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I think battles including these would be absolute awesome they include the E100 the MAUS the amx-50 IS4M the is-7 the object 279 the T 29 / t-34 m103 Conqueror tortoise t95 fv4005 and so on

Majority of players don't know how to take out tanks, they're some WOT kids who think you have to shoot centre of mass everytime.. Then the results come in: oh this tank can't get penned so it has to go up in BR. no its fine where it was, people just have to know where to shoot

Armor for heavy tanks should actually matter in an engagement. Its the reason I fell in love with tanks was about the armor, not the size of the cannon

I do believe that the proposition is a very solid one. I personally would love to see that happen.

Fun trick to do when playing BR's without radar AA's Against SPAA, flying in a straight line while inverted either gives you two outcomes: 1: you get shot down 2: the SPAA's brain self-destructs and their shells never connect

Im with you Mate! I also miss the old the days when there was only a BR from 1 2 3...10 instead of 1.3 1.7 and so on. This totaly ruined the Game for me when they introduced it and i stoped playing it for almost 3 years. It would be nice to See If gaijin would at least Split the Tech trees to WW2 korean war Vietnam cold war or Something Like that. I realy Loved to Play the Jumbo but since its Up to 6.3 and youre facing marders leopards and stuff its useless. Why has a WW2 era Tank to face cold war Tanks. There are more than 20 years of Technology between these. In my opinion there re many Tanks through all the Tech trees which belong to another BR. Otherwise it would be cool If they would Change the MM mechanis. When the system only Matches you between a BR + or - 0.3 instead of 1.0 I even would Take a longer waiting time to find a Match as Long as it becomes more even than. So thats it... I guess! Sry for my english and greetings from Germany! Keep Up the good Work PAL and i already Wish you a Happy New year!

Separating it would also help compression a lot, beyond 7 it's just stupid how tanks at BR 8 have to fight 1940s tanks in a downtier but also be competitive against tanks from 50 years later at BR 9. Then we can just have a different tree that is roughly the cold war era, decompress it so we don't put 70 years of technology in a few BRs, the choice for players to start a WW2 grind or a cold war to modern era grind and everybody wins. Or of course we can do none of that and outsource more vehicle models which then get sold for $70 and don't improve anything ever.

Remember when this thing first came out, and it was unbeatable? Like... just drive straight towards the enemy, everything you faced your gun would just blast right thru, and their guns would just plink off like a joke 🤣

I'll never forget his first m103 video, trap shotting a is6 with a... very special kill Cam and soundtrack :)

Tanks: Lol Aircraft: AGXJHSAOICNENW AAAAAA I CRRRYYYYYYY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Modern sh*t vehicles: Hey grandpa! Time for retirement!

This thing, along with the M47, was the OG top tier tank.

I mean that's whe whole point of br. Too low no one can pen it but too high it's a little bit out dated. So for the conventinal round vs chemical round can barely live with it. *BUT not with the 2nd gen ATGM and APFSDS.* I think that's what the old school heavy tank should be separated with.

4:49 Phly does the harlem shake bass drop.

I really wish there was a game mode that basically limited to "old" tanks before the stark paradigm shift of modernized tanks. Don't get me wrong I love the modern tanks and I'm very happy they're in the game It would just be nice to have a mode where I can just play some good old-fashioned WW2 era fun.

7:51 CC “It’s because my turd Is so big”

They should have it play against the same tanks off and on. If their tank has a APFDS or any other round unlocked that melts away a heavies armor, then they should get moved up against tanks that can stand their rounds. When Gagin (sry idk how to spell it on the fly) moves up the cold war heavies, their destroying the purpose of the heavy tank. A heavy tank is supposed to have lots of armor and a big gun, and the smaller tanks would respectfully flank it. That's the way armored warfare used to be during the 1940s-1970s.

If you think it's bad with the M103, the T32 and the T32E1 are near unplayable at their BRs too.

id like them to have heavy tanks be terrifying to come across and actually have to think about where to shoot it and maybe even encourage team work, but then on that note most people will just be like aww well this heavy tank is amazing ill only bring heavy's well i have a solution, make it so it like the aircraft, the SP required is more than what you start with so first engagement is lights and mediums duking it out then in roll the heavies after :) i feel like it would be an elegant solve and would make the game quite interesting, that's just my 10 pence though

i feel like war thunder should have a gamemode where you support infantry and killing tanks isnt your main priority to win the battle, which would solve spawn camping and the CAS issue

I think a vehicles br should be affected by the modules equipped to some degree. Some vehicles are borderline useless until you research a particular round or missiles etc.

If they made a split in The tree somewhere between WW2 cold war technology we could have a new modern reserve tier with hummers, landrovers, toyotas ect, moving on to light vehicles and then up to tanks. Mean whilst the top tier of the WW2 age would be allowed to excel again with the heavy meta coming back into play. Oh, and go back to balancing light tanks using scouting which was the whole point of adding that feature, rather than balancing them on combat capability which has caused most of this mess.

they should put them up year vs year... I hate having a "heavy" tank that is 10-25 years out of place just to get turned into a non-heavy tank that is just slower and bigger of a target than the rest.

Hi, I'm new to your channel. But I really enjoyed this video because I can see, you're playing WT in such proffesional way.

with a hole that BIG in the F3D you would think that thing wouldn't fly that good at all and have a lot of drag from that hole

Split the ground trees like naval. From b.r 1 to 8 its upto the Maus, AMX 50, Conq and T10/IS8, alternate tree is IFVs to MBTs and all the wheelie boys

My favorite tank in the entire game, man! And IRL! Glad to see you posting again, brother. Hope all is well.

I haven't played War Thunder in quite some time, but I had a dream last night that I was getting spawn camped by 2 E-100's and I just couldn't catch a break. I've had some really awesome War Thunder dreams and last night's wasn't one of them. I might have to redeem myself irl later today.

armour meta has been dead ever since M103 got the HEAT-FS round.

Yeah heat spam soured the fun, you'd expect that Heavy tanks being replaced by MBTs would be where the heat spam comes into play naturally but instead it's artificially forced into even ww2 stuff.

Someone needs to contact Gaijin and point out the U.S. had APDS for the gun that the m103 uses. They had both HVAP and APDS. The APDS could penetrate up to 12 inches of armor at 1000 yards....