Ke-Ni Otsu

Page last updated 18th December, 2024.

Ke-Ni Otsu is a tier 3 Japanese premium light tank. Its known for its insane DPM, but not much else. This tank is from a bygone age of World of Tanks Blitz, the pre 5.5 age, which means its essentially completely out of place in the game.

Additional sections have been included in this review to explain misunderstandings or caveats of this fairly unknown tank, use the below table of contents to skip to the relevant section you need.

For this review to really make sense, and for why the Ke-Ni Otsu has the current reputation that it has, first it must be understood what the difference between being OP (OverPowered) is, compared to what it means to be broken.

Overpowered vs Broken

The Ke-Ni Otsu is considered by the general playerbase to be this:
“An OP/broken tier 3 tank with extremely high DPM which is one of the rarest tanks in the game.”

There is an important difference between being OP and being broken.

Overpowered:
A tank being OP is a tank that is too strong at either one thing or at everything.
For example, the T54E2 can be considered OP, due to it being able to do everything in a battle, and not really lacking in any statistical area. It is “too strong” to be considered a well-balanced tank.

Broken:
A tank being “broken” does not necessarily mean its OP, though sometimes players confuse the terms, because broken does mean that a tank has too much of something.
For example, the Ho-Ri is broken in terms of its penetration ability, the SU-122-54, Tortoise, and Jagdtiger are broken in terms of their DPM output, and the Chi-Nu Kai and Angry Connor are broken in terms of their credit coefficient.
Are any of the above mentioned tanks OP? No, generally these tanks are considered balanced.

Tanks can be OP due to broken statistics, but a tank with broken statistics is not necessarily OP.

And the Ke-Ni Otsu is this, its broken, not OP. It has an insane amount of DPM for its tier, but its not at all overpowered.
This tank is easily misunderstood just due to basically no one owning it, and as its at such a low tier, many players may not be able to relate to the gameplay, and may be misled by the reputation or rarity of the tank.

Armour

(The Ke-Ni Otsu in the images is using Improved Assembly)

Drag slider right -> to view 40mm AP
Drag slider left <- to view 41mm HE

When flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 16-18mm
Lower plate 20mm
Turret 18-30mm

Armour vs all tier 2-4 tanks:
Just like the Ke-Ni, the Ke-Ni Otsu has a complete lack of armour. It cannot bounce anything at any angle, and gets very easily penetrated by any tanks with HE.

Gun

The Ke-Ni Otsu mounts a 37mm autoloader.

-Alpha damage is 40 on AP, 36 on premium AP, and 50 on HE
-It has 4 shells in the magazine, with a 0.67s intra-clip reload, so in 2.01s it can burst out 160 damage.
-It has a 3s reload, giving it 1920 DPM
-Penetration on AP is 48mm, premium AP is 69mm, and HE is 18mm
–Estimated aim time is 3.8/3.6s
–Base aim time is 1.6s, but it can get down to 1.30s.
-Dispersion is 0.375/0.326
–Gun handling is 0.18/0.18/0.1, or 0.16/0.16/0.09 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -15 degrees over the front of the tank, but -11 degrees over the sides and rear.
-Shell velocity is 580m/s on all shells.

Overall this is an ok gun. For tier 3 it has good handling and decent dispersion, and of course it has that completely broken DPM and reload time. It also has very good gun depression, though its not as special in tier 3, where loads of tanks actually have -12 to -15 degrees.

However that’s where the good ends. The penetration is terrible, it has poor base aim time for its tier, and even though its burst damage is great, each shell’s alpha damage is very low, and its even worse that the tank has to shoot 4 times to get its damage out (this is explained more below). On top of this the shell velocity is extremely low, and penetration is among the worst in tier 3.

Mobility

-Top speed is 50km/h forwards, and -20km/h in reverse
-Traverse speed is 60.4 deg/s on hard terrain, and 42.2 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 19 hp/t, it has decent 135 horsepower engine for its 7 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 27.3 hp/t on hard terrain, and 19 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are 0.7/1/1.4

On paper this mobility looks just fine, however the issue is in its medium terrain performance. On hard terrain, the Otsu is a very quick and mobile tank, with amazing acceleration and traverse speed. However on medium terrain, its acceleration is just decent, and its traverse speed is poor.

The mobility is adequate, but not as good as it looks in game.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The Ke-Ni Otsu does not have any special provisions or consumables.

Calibrated Shells:
Ke-Ni Otsu has the lowest penetration in tier 3, even with calibrated shells equipped, it still struggles to penetrate many enemies. The benefits that improved ventilation give are nothing in the face of improved penetration on this tank. Use calibrated shells, its an essential to the gameplay and to actually winning battles.

Calibrated shells would increase the penetration on AP from 48mm to 52mm, premium AP from 69mm to 74mm, and HE from 18mm to 19mm.

Supercharger:
Due to its terrible shell velocity and its low penetration, supercharger actually helps the Ke-Ni Otsu immensely in battle. It makes a noticeable difference in your ability to hit shots due to the Faster shell speed, which is very important due to how low your damage is and how often you have to shoot.

Supercharger increases shell velocity from 580m/s up to 783m/s.

Improved Assembly:
As the Ke-Ni Otsu has no armour whatsoever, it should use improved assembly. The tank also has the lowest HP in tier 3, and this really cripples it in battle, you must increase the HP of this tank.

Improved assembly would increase the HP from 390 up to 406.

Vertical Stabilizer:
This is essential on the Ke-Ni Otsu. While its handling is not terrible, 0.18/0.18/0.1 is not at all impressive for a light tank. The vehicle also has such a high rate of fire that it should be trying to reduce its after-shot-bloom as much as possible, which is what the vertical stabilizer does.

While refined gun would improve the dispersion of the Otsu, its not necessary. The tank is already ineffective at long ranges due to its low alpha but high magazine capacity, and due to it not having great shell velocity or penetration.
Use the stabilizer, it makes a huge difference to this tank’s gameplay.

Gameplay advice

The Ke-Ni Otsu is a support tank. It plays by using its allies as meatshields so that it can use its amazing DPM and just farm damage without being hit.

It is imperative that you do not get shot at in this tank. You have to play very carefully as getting hit shortens your game significantly.

Don’t chase damage:
Your tank is far too weak and fragile to be chasing after enemies just to unload its clip. Your tank shouldn’t even be playing at the front.

Ke-Ni Otsu works best when its not being shot at, and when its gun can just deal damage. Don’t put yourself in situations where you would get shot. You cannot trade damage due to such low alpha, needing 2 whole seconds to unload your clip, and having less HP than a tier 2 light tank.

The clip reload is so short, you have no need to chase down enemies when you can literally be fully reloaded in just 3 seconds. Its far more important to prioritise keeping your HP to extend your battle. You have plenty of DPM, you don’t need to chase damage; you have too few HP, you do need to conserve it.

Don’t hesitate to play like a TD:
To get some enjoyment or decent gameplay out of this tank, don’t be afraid of sitting back behind a bush and playing like a TD would. Your tank is small and has high camo rating, and has extremely low durability, it works well played in a bush.

You cannot take hits, and your gun requires time on target to deal damage effectively. The only ways you can get this time on target without taking damage in return, are if your allies take hits for you, or you are unspotted.

Sacrifice your allies:
Yes its selfish, but its even worse if you are not playing the tank to its best-suited role, which is to support. Your team is better equipped for taking hits than you are, and you are better equipped than your team for dealing damage quickly.

By using your team as meatshields, you are mitigating your tank’s weakness, and utilizing your team as a strength. You are also enabling your team to win, as playing your tank in the correct way is by far one of the biggest contributors to winning battles.

Don’t be afraid to reload the magazine:
The magazine reload time is just 3s. If an enemy pulls back, you can easily be fully reloaded by the time they pull forward again.

Use premium AP:
Don’t cheap out when playing this tank. It is a requirement to spam premium ammunition in the Otsu, otherwise it can struggle to penetrate even fairly lightly armoured enemies.

Use it often, but not unnecessarily. DPM is the only advantage that your tank has over the enemies, and using premium AP lowers your DPM from 1920 to 1728 (using calibrated shells).

In order to be effective in this tank, you have to try maximise the amount of damage you do to the enemy, so you should only use premium rounds when you actually need.

Avoid taking damage:
The Otsu cannot take hits from any enemy. It has such low durability that even the lowest damage tier 3 tank (50 dmg per shot) takes away 12% of the Otsu’s HP in a single shot.

Sure, your full magazine does take away roughly 32% of an enemy’s health, but that’s only if you do actually hit all your shots, and do actually penetrate all your shots, and don’t use premium AP.

You also have to keep in mind, its not just 1 tank you might trade with in the battle, there are 7 enemies, there are potentially tier 4 medium and heavy tanks which you can’t easily penetrate. There are even tier 3 tanks which you may struggle to penetrate.

Playing this tank, its best to just avoid being shot at altogether, avoid the damage completely.

Why the Otsu is a weak tank

For any players who joined the game after this period:
Update 5.5 was the update which many players considered quite ruined the game. It removed all the “fun” from low tier tanks (tier 1-6 tanks mainly), and removed an enormous amount of tech tree vehicles, including all tier 1 tanks, and nearly 100 tanks from tiers 2-7.

What happened in 5.5:
WG essentially “streamlined” player progression up tech trees, removing all modules they thought which were unnecessary and slowed down players grinding through the tech trees.

WG did this by removing all the high alpha howitzer and derp guns from tanks, removing low alpha and quick reload guns from tanks, removing autoloader guns, and removing burst-fire machine guns. By reducing all tanks to just a few modules, with no complicated gun system, just a cyclic gun, would make the game “easier to understand”, by WG’s reasoning.
Unfortunately, these gun types were what made tanks fun, there were and are no guns like this in higher tiers, derp guns, howitzers, machine guns, and quick fire autoloaders (like the gun of the Otsu), either don’t exist in high tier, or are extremely rare/different from the low tier versions.

Why the Ke-Ni Otsu does not fit in the game after 5.5:
Other than mentioned above, WG also HEAVILY changed statistics of tanks from tiers 1-4 to make it more “new player friendly”, and this went through 2 iterations.
The first was 5.5, which nerfed all tier 1-4 tank’s DPM, alpha, and reload time; but buffed the HP, penetration of all tier 1-4 tanks, and the armour of many tech tree tanks. All the tanks with autoloaders or machine guns were made to have smaller magazine sizes.

This 1st iteration made for extremely slow and boring gameplay, but the Otsu’s gun was made even more broken due to a larger DPM disparity, and more HP for it to farm.
The 2nd iteration came in either 5.7 or 5.8 (and continued till 7.1), when WG buffed all tier 1-4 tanks to have higher DPM, most of the buffs were to alpha damage, not reload time. All the tier 1-4 tanks kept their higher HP.

Through all this, the Ke-Ni Otsu was untouched, and remains that way even now.

The problem with this is that the Otsu is from an age of the game where everything in its tier had less alpha damage, everything had less HP, everything had less penetration, and many tanks had less armour.

This means that the only actual advantage the Otsu has over these tanks is in DPM, it has nothing else. That’s not really even an advantage, considering its larger magazine size and lower alpha, it needs a lot of time on target to deal damage, when it does deal damage the damage is not high, and it really struggles with penetration.

The tank gets out traded all the time, all your enemies have higher alpha damage, they don’t need to stay exposed for 2 whole seconds to deal their damage, they can just pull back, which means you cannot shoot them, and your insane DPM is wasted.
What’s more, you start the game at a disadvantage, you have 90-120 less HP than any other light tank in tier 3, and for tier 3, that’s a huge difference.

Overall

Overall the Ke-Ni Otsu is at best a mediocre tank. It just doesn’t fit in the game at all, its very weak in battles, and it is not enjoyable to play.

It has insanely good DPM and gun depression, and when it does work it feels very nice to have; however everything else about the gun is un-enjoyable. The way it deals damage is awkward, you need so long on target, each shot you miss is crippling as your alpha is so low, accuracy and handling are just average, and penetration is terrible.
The armour is non-existent, and every tank that has HE can penetrate it. It also has an enormous HP deficit, so it can’t even afford to take hits or trade damage.
The mobility is great on hard terrain, but very mediocre on medium, so overall its mobility is acceptable at best.

Is it worth getting?

Original article for the sale, from old.wotblitz site (which no longer works since being closed in 2021)

Its not worth getting, its a bad tank. The tank is also completely un-obtainable, as it has not been sold since its release.
If this tank ever did get sold, it would only be worth getting if you wanted to collect it, because the tank itself is just not good, nor is it very fun.

The Ke-ni Otsu was first sold in 2015 in a bundle with the Excelsior, which costed roughly £/$14.99. It could also be bought on its own for £/$4.99.
Both bundles were immediately removed from store (about 20 minutes) after its introduction, as the Otsu was actually meant to have a 9 second magazine reload, not 2.9 seconds.

Its unfortunate that this is the fate of the Otsu, if it did have its correct reload time upon release, it would probably actually still be a relevant tank in the tier 3 meta (much like the regular Ke-Ni), and players would actually be able to buy it.
Its quite a cute little tank with a nice design, and a lot of players would still probably buy this tank even if it didn’t have any special stats on it, just for collection or the occasional low tier fun battle.

Low tier tanks don’t get sold for gold, plus this tank has not been sold since 2015. Its not a great tank, its very weak, very fragile, not very fun, not very enjoyable.
Ke-Ni Otsu, if it was ever sold for gold, would only be worth 750-1000 gold, even with its current stats.
Rarity is not a value to pay gold for, so its rarity in the game does not factor into this value.

Most recently sold for:

Excelsior + Ke Ni Otsu bundle: £/$14.99
Ke-Ni bundle: £/$4.99

Both sold on November 13, 2015

Camo cost:

Ke-Ni Otsu currently has no special camouflages.

Comparison to Ke-Ni

There is a comparison review of this tank compared to the Ke-Ni. You can access this page here.

Could the tank be sold?

Currently, the tank could genuinely be sold for gold/money, and it would not break tier 3.

The tank is balanced, sure its done in a weird way, putting all eggs into one basket: its DPM. But it is balanced nonetheless, and actually rather weak.
Sure, its damage capability is a little bit toxic, but the way it deals this damage is just so awkward and clunky, with very below-average alpha, terrible penetration, poor shell velocity, and having to stay on target for 2 seconds while you shoot your 4 shots, any of which could bounce or miss.

The tank is easily countered, and it compensates in literally every other area of its stats for that DPM.

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