World of Tanks: My Thoughts on Swedish Tank Destroyers So Far

Yeah, I know I took the screenshot a while ago now!

Tank destroyers have long been my favourite class of tank in World of Tanks so I'll likely be putting up a lot of blog posts on them. 

So, my thoughts on the Swedish tank destroyer line on the whole so far as I have played up to the Ikv 90 Typ B. So do consider I haven't gotten to play around with the whole siege and travel mode of the tier 8 or higher yet (soon!) I have another 40-50k or so XP and a metric ton of credits to go before I get there.

All in all they have some interesting low tier options, the tier 5 was a particular favourite of mine due to it's standard ammunition for it's howitzer being HEAT rounds. This meant it could really really ruin anyone's day if you could hit them. However like most of the Swedish line they have cardboard armour and HE rounds even at low tiers will usually just go right through them. It's incredible gun depression at least helped with poking ridge-lines that other tank destroyers can only dream of.

Tier 6 with the Ikv 65 Alt II sees the line moving away from howitzers and more toward long range sniping, which it did fairly okay at. It was helped by it's agility and ability to relocate as needed, but as with most of them it's armour was over-matched by everything. That said it felt very much like a Hellcat without the turret to me so it didn't take long to get to tier 7 which is where the brakes feel like they got slammed on progression wise.

I am currently sat at tier 7 as you can see above, this one feels like much more of a grind so far. It's not a bad tank in the strictest sense of things, the gun can pose a threat to even tier 9 heavies and if it gets spotted it's usually fast enough to escape all but the speediest of tanks. However the low damage per shot and the oddly slow reload for that damage can make it feel more like a chore to play. 

It's pretty sneaky given it's low profile but that compared with it's speed is literally your only defence. The complete lack of armour (15mm frontal) means anyone with half a clue will be slamming high explosive shells into you for devastating effect, artillery is especially deadly to this especially as it can see tier 9 artillery. I've had near misses from GW Tigers shave off half of my hitpoints. It really does the 'glass' part of a 'glass cannon' well that's all I will say on that part. All in all you should really do your best to avoid being shot at in the first place as even tier 1's would have no trouble punching holes into it's paper thin hull.

The top gun also doesn't feel as accurate as a thinly armoured tank destroyers gun should, I've lost count of the times a fully aimed shot has just whiffed completely or fired off to one side or the other and simply tracked a target rather than damaged it. Whilst on paper the 0.36 accuracy is pretty average given that you have to play this thing in the back line you feel it a lot more, especially with the fairly low fire rate for a 90mm gun. Despite the gun being mounted in the rear, the range of movement it has to the left and right as well as decent gun depression makes it fairly easy to keep your gun on all but the fastest targets without the battle with terrain the TD's like the SU-100M1 and SU-101 have.

All that said however I am definitely looking forward to getting into the tier 8 and higher Swedish tank destroyers and playing around with the siege and travel mode. I even have a female crew from the Christmas event waiting to crew the tier 8, so once I get to the biggest TD's I'll have a more in-depth look at them.