That was a short test. I wonder how well balanced things are? From what I hear the Russian Heavies getting some nice updates. Guess I'll find out Friday.
From what I can see, things are fairly well balanced, but there are some concerns that the IS-8 is slightly overpowered and that the IS-4 is "useless" compared to the IS-7. There's also a bit of concern that the ST-I (or is it ST-1?) gets a crappy base gun for the tier, and it's over 100K to the next gun.
A lot of people are pissed that they nerfed the KV-4. To me, it felt great at 45kph... it's a sitting duck with a top speed of 30kph. I realize the tank is 100 tons, but you can't catch anything with it and you can't get out of the artillery fire with it... and forget going uphill in it completely. With a tank that heavy, ramming should be a viable tactic, but it can't get up to speed unless you're headed downhill in a banzai. Even with the upgraded engine, it does 5kph on even a slight upgrade, leaving you really vulnerable.
Overall, the tanks that I made it to seemed balanced. The KV-2 felt like it belonged in tier 6, the T-150 felt a bit awkward but I didn't get nearly enough battles in it to make a decent judgement. The fully upgraded KV-3 is really nice and still gets favorable matchmaking; I ended up in plenty of battles where Tier 8 or Tier 7 were the top, and not plenty of automatic "I'm the only tier 7 WTF" matches.
I didn't get up to any of the good new stuff though; the ST-I is 166K once you elite the KV-4, and I had just unlocked the IS and elited it and was working on the IS-3 to get through to the -8 and -7, which also had >150K each to unlock. Even on test with the 10X rates, that's a lot of battles, especially for me. I really wanted to try the ST-I and the IS-8 since it'll be a hell of a long time before I see one on live.
I'm just going to be happy for the 2 free slots. I'll probably sell the KV-1 and keep the KV-2, and sell the T-150 and buy a KV-1S after I try a few more battles with it. I'll definitely be getting an IS next, as I like it more than the new KV-3 and was doing a lot better with it, and I think I'll like the line it leads to more than the KV-4 line.
I still have my T14, Hotchkiss(f), T1 Heavy, PzKpfw IV, StuG III, JpIV as well to mess around with. I also have the tier 4 turreted American TD, since I'm trying to work my way up that line too. I eventually want to get into American and German heavies as well, but that's a long, long way off.
I'd love to see what my efficiency rating was for the second test round... my efficiency rating on the NA server is piss poor (around 797), but I've been getting slowly better. I'm still making stupid mistakes about every third fight, and that's what I'm working on the most.