Quetzal

Page last updated 3rd of October, 2024.

Quetzal is a tier 8 Hybrid nation heavy tank. It has decent armour, with a 340 alpha damage gun. It has poor gun stats and some of the worst mobility in the entire game.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
5. Gameplay advice
6. Tank gameplay:
7. Overall
8. Is it worth getting?
9. How to obtain:
10. Camo cost:
11. Notes for stock tank:

Armour

(The Quetzal in the images is using Improved Assembly)

Drag slider right -> to view 225mm AP
Drag slider <- left to view 265mm APCR

When flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 320-390mm
Mid/lower plate 120-200mm
Weakpoints on upper plate 164mm

Turret cheeks 300-410mm
Weakpoints around gun 200-285mm

Side armour:
Side armour is 89mm, this is pretty good for a heavy tank, but (as shown later in this review), this side armour is very inadequate for the level of mobility that this tank has.

89mm is still good enough to sidescrape, which this tank can do pretty well.

Armour vs tier all tier 7-9 enemies:
Against all enemies it faces, the Quetzal’s armour performs roughly the same.

The turret front and upper plate are both too strong to penetrate, even most tier 9 heavy tanks when using premium ammo won’t be able to penetrate the upper plate. The turret is weaker to tier 9 premium ammo, but all standard ammo and most tier 8 premium ammo will still bounce off.

The lower plate is very weak, no amount of angling can make the lower plate strong. The mid area that’s directly next to the tracks is also weak, being essentially flat armour.

The tank has many weakpoints, the “eyes” above the gun are penetrable to most tier 8 tanks and all tier 9 tanks, the areas around the gun are penetrable to most tier 8 heavy tanks and tier 9 tanks, and the 2 viewports right under the turret are penetrable to even tier 7 tanks.

Overall performance:
The armour overall is decent, roughly average level for a heavy tank. While it is very resistant on both the upper plate and turret, its lower plate is very poor, and it has many weakpoints on all areas of the tank’s front.

While its strong, its not reliable, which makes it quite average. The weakpoints are small, making them hard to hit, but enemies can hit them, and there are many to aim for.

Gun

The Quetzal mounts a 110mm gun.

-Alpha damage is 340 on AP, 290 on HEAT, and 420 on HE
-It has an 9.9s reload, giving it 2069 DPM.
-Penetration on AP is 215mm, HEAT is 250mm, and HE is 58mm.
–Estimated aim time is 4.3/4.6s
–Base aim time is 2.8s, but it can get down to 2.16s.
-Dispersion is 0.353/0.300
–Gun handling is 0.22/0.22/0.17, or 0.2/0.2/0.15 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -7 degrees.

DPM & dispersion are poor, especially for the alpha damage. Penetration is decent on AP & HE, but very poor on HEAT. Aim time & gun handling are both very poor for this level of alpha damage.

Despite many of the stats being mediocre or poor, the gun is actually quite usable in performance. Mostly due to the terrible mobility of the Quetzal, the poor aim time, dispersion, and aim time are less noticeable than they seem on stats. If you can penetrate AP, then the low penetration of HEAT isn’t so noticeable (and you won’t decrease the DPM further).

Mobility

-Top speed is 30km/h forwards, and -11km/h in reverse.
-Traverse speed is 20.9 deg/s on hard terrain, and 16.1 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 12.4 hp/t, it has a decent 1495 horsepower engine for its 121 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 12.4hp/t on hard terrain, and 9.5 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are 1/1.3/1.5

This is overall abysmal mobility. The top speed is low, acceleration isn’t terrible, but its below average, and reverse speed is poor. Terrain resistances of 1 to 1.3 on hard/medium terrain are decent.

The major problem with the Quetzal is the traverse speed. This isn’t just “bad”, its the worst in game by a large margin, and it causes tanks like the T28, VK 100.01 (P), AT 15, and VK 168.01 (P) to seem like very agile vehicles in comparison.
To put it into perspective, fairly “average” traverse on medium terrain for a heavy tank is 28-30 degrees/s; the Quetzal does 16, almost half the traverse rate of an “average” level of traverse.

This traverse speed slows down the tank so much that in most situations, you can’t even accelerate to your top speed due to needing to turn (and in a strait line you can reach 30km. so its not a problem of acceleration). Similarly, the traverse causes your hull armour to be negated, as sometimes you can’t turn the hull fast enough. There are other situations where you can’t turn the gun to shoot enemies, due to this slow traverse.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The Quetzal has no special consumables or provisions.

Calibrated Shells:
Due to the Quetzal having just terrible premium penetration, 250mm on HEAT, you need to use calibrated shells. While DPM is low, its not low to a point where its unusable, having 340 alpha is decent enough to still be able to damage trade with other heavies, and even the 10.4s reload when using calibrated shells still easily out-reloads guns with 400 alpha or more.

Calibrated shells would increase penetration on AP from 215mm to 232mm, on HEAT from 250mm to 283mm, and on HE from 58mm to 63mm.

Improved Assembly:
Enhanced armour doesn’t make a difference on this tank, due to its great angling on its hull front, and very high thickness on its turret front, improving the armour just isn’t needed, and against the level of penetration that you fight against, its overkill.

The Quetzal also just has many weakpoints on its hull and turret which are too weak to enhance. Its much better to use improved assembly, and increase the already high base HP. Improved assembly will increase your base HP from 1920 up to 1997, among the highest in tier 8.

Improved Control:
Due to having the worst traverse speed in game by a large margin, the Quetzal needs to have improved control. While you may want engine accelerator, consider that the actual acceleration of this tank isn’t bad, its pretty average for such a heavy tank, even better some other superheavy rivals.

What slows this tank down so massively is just completely terrible traverse speed (terrible is an understatement). Since as a heavy tank you often need to turn the hull to get your frontal armour to the enemy, and you need to turn the hull with your turret to react to enemies on the side, hull traverse speed is so important.

On most tanks, they have enough hull traverse speed, but the Quetzal doesn’t, hence it needs the improved control equipment.

Vertical Stabilizer/Refined Gun:
There are 2 arguments for this tank with this equipment choice.

1- Your aim time is terrible, and you aim very slowly for only having 340 alpha damage. Since your mobility is so bad and you rarely ever sit still due to this, vertical stabilizer is better to make your aim time more usable.

2- You’re so slow anyway, that you won’t feel the aim time or gun handling as much, hence using refined gun is better as it improves your accuracy in all situations. Slower aim time doesn’t matter as much since you are too slow for the gun to bloom out too much anyway.

Which side of the argument you are on is up to your choice; if you aren’t sure, then try it out in battle a few times with each equipment piece.

Gameplay advice

The Quetzal needs to think like a superheavy. Despite not having the armour or gun of a superheavy, its mobility is worse than superheavy tanks in many regards, and that really limits how you play the tank.

General gameplay:
The most important thing is to play on the heavy flank. The heavy flank is a slow flank, enemies are slower, they reload slower, they have more armour which makes them slower to die, they aim slower, and are less accurate (compared to the medium flank).

This is important, as the Quetzal itself has slow reload, low DPM, slow mobility, for its armour to work it requires an inaccurate and slow aiming enemy, sidescraping only works with slow gameplay, and enemy tanks being slower means your traverse speed will at least have a chance.

If you fight against mediums, they can just negate your armour with their accuracy, they can flank you and abuse your terrible traverse speed, and then you just become a big hitpoint piñata for them. 

Use buildings and terrain to make your armour work. You need to hide the lower plate by going hulldown, use destroyed buildings, rubble mounds, or gun depression for this. With the lower plate exposed, enemies won’t bounce off your armour.
Use buildings to sidescrape, there are a few weakpoints when sidescraping, but they aren’t easy to hit due to being small, and sidescraping works quite well.

Read the matchup and plan:
Since your mobility is just so bad, you must check what tanks are on your team and the enemy team, consider the map, and plan where to go base on this.

You can’t react to situations, since your mobility is so bad. The flank you choose is the flank you either win on or die on, so you have to make decisions very carefully. Also consider where you can use your armour, and if allies will be there to help you. Definitely never go alone to any area, as your terrible mobility and low DPM makes you bad at dealing with more than 1 enemy tank.

Low DPM:
Trade with alpha damage. Since you should use calibrated shells, your DPM is 1959 with a 10.4s reload.

Against most enemies, you won’t be able to out DPM them, so you’ll need to use the 340 alpha damage to trade. This works against tanks like the Tiger II, T32, KV-4, E75 TS, Action X etc, as they all have 310 alpha or less, and you’ll do more damage to them. Just avoid these tanks when they try to push forward, as they reload much faster than you, and if they shoot you twice, then they’ll have done more damage to you.

Against some enemies, such as IS-3, Obj.252U, Tornvagn, T34, you can try to use your reload time to out-trade them. These tanks have 400+ alpha, and all have a reload of at least 12s, meaning you are able to shoot them twice before they reload.

Keep to hard terrain:
Due to the terrible traverse speed of the Quetzal, you must stay on hard terrain whenever possible.

Acceleration isn’t a problem for this tank, its the hull turn rate. On hard terrain, your traverse speed is 22 degrees/s, but on medium terrain, its reduced by 5 degrees/s, down to 16.9 degrees/s. This is a MASSIVE decrease, especially as 22 degrees/s is already extremely slow traverse speed, going on to medium terrain just makes it unusably bad.

Sidescrape:
Sidescraping does work quite well in this tank, however be aware that if enemies decide to push forward while you are sidescraping, your hull traverse speed isn’t good enough to turn and bounce them, and its not even good enough to let your gun follow the enemy tank.

Turn your turret and hull at the same time:
The Quetzal has 21.87 degrees/s traverse speed on its turret, and between 16 and 22 degrees on its hull. This makes it the slowest traversing gun in tier 8 outside of some TDs. 

This terrible combination of traverse speeds means that often, enemy tanks can avoid your gun just by driving around you. This isn’t just fast medium or light tanks, even faster heavy tanks are able to circle around you and avoid being shot, since you turn so slowly.

To try and mitigate this as much as possible, keep looking at the map to know where enemies are, since one of the worst things that can happen to the Quetzal is having to deal with more than 1 enemy at a time (due to it being essentially unable to move). When turning, you must  turn both the hull and the turret in the same direction, if you don’t do this then you’ll basically never be able to shoot the enemy.

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The Quetzal needs to think like a superheavy, planning where it will go, checking the matchup, constantly looking at the minimap to check for enemies, and often relying on allied support. It can use the usual sidescraping and hulldown positions, but again due to poor mobility it has to be cautious.

Tank gameplay:

(To come soon)

Overall

Armour – 5/10
Gun – 3/10
Mobility – 0.5/10
Speed – 3/10

Quetzal is overall a terrible tank.

Armour is just average. Upper plate and turret are strong, but with many small weakpoints. Lower plate is very weak. High HE protection, average HESH protection, can sidescrape decently.
Gun has low DPM, slow reload, low premium penetration, bad aim time, bad gun handling, poor dispersion. 340 alpha isn’t terrible, AP & HE penetration are average. Gun depression (-7) is poor due to the tank’s size.
Mobility is abysmal, with mediocre acceleration, and the worst traverse speed in game by a VERY large margin. Traverse is so poor that it limits your speed in battle due to the need to turn. Reverse speed poor at -11km/h.
Speed is below-average at 30km/h.

Is it worth getting?

The Quetzal is not worth getting at all. This is not a good tank, and there are quite a few tanks which perform a very similar role to it, but are just far better.

The Quetzal is unbalanced. Its armour is really just average, so why does it trade out so much mobility? Its gun is also nothing special, in fact many of its stats are just bad.

For its level of armour, mobility, and gun, there are a few similar tanks.
1-Keiler:
This is a very strong heavy with great mobility on hard terrain but terrible on medium, but its still more mobile than Quetzal. Its armour is more reliable and its gun is eons better.
2- KV-4:
This is a slow heavy with poor mobility (still better than Quetzal by a large amount). Its armour is more reliable and easier to use, and its gun has similar performance.
3- KV-5:
This is a more mobile superheavy with good speed and decent mobility, its armour is much more effective than the Quetzal just due to it being able to use mobility. Its gun has similar performance, but much better DPM & handling.

You could take one of the above 3 tanks, have similar traits to the Quetzal, but just be a much better vehicle. That’s including a KV-4, a tech tree tank which generally isn’t considered as an amazing vehicle, but next to the Quetzal, its seems great.

The Quetzal is worth 1,000 gold. Its worth 1000 gold only because this is how much you get for selling the tank, that’s how pointless and how bad the tank is. If you want to get something which is similar to this, consider a Keiler, KV-5, or the free in tech tree, KV-4.

How to obtain:

This tank is available as the second reward tank in Season 5 “Legends”. It can be earned completely for free just by playing quite actively during the season.

Camo cost:

Notes for stock tank:

Do not play this tank at all unless you have T4 modules, even they you’ll be suffering due to the terrible mobility of the tank, but at least with T4 modules you have a usable gun, good HP, and literally 50% more traverse speed.

Stock armour shown against 225mm AP, Improved Assembly is equipped.

Turret:
The stock turrets of the Quetzal are still well armoured, as shown above, as long as you keep the front faced towards the enemy, it will easily bounce standard ammo.

The main difference to the top turret is that tier 8 tanks can easily penetrate it with premium ammo, whereas the top turret would bounce the shots.

Gun:
The stock guns are all terrible. Consider that even the fully upgraded T4 gun, has bad stats in many areas, the T1, T2, & T3 guns are all just much worse in their performance.

Mobility:
The stock mobility is unplayable. If you don’t have T4 tracks and T4 engine, do not even touch this tank.

The most stock tracks have only 10.5 degrees/s traverse speed. If you dont have clutch braking crew skill up to level 7, then your traverse speed could be as low as 9.8 degrees/s.

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