HEAT

A shaped-charge shell with high penetration that ignores distance entirely, but is defeated by tracks, screens and any spaced armor it detonates on.

Also known as high explosive anti-tank, heat shell.

HEAT penetrates with a jet formed on impact rather than with kinetic energy. It therefore loses no penetration over distance and only ricochets beyond 85 degrees, which makes it the most reliable answer to heavily armored targets at range.

Its weakness is anything in front of the armor. The charge detonates on the first surface it meets, so tracks, side skirts, spaced plates and even a fence spend part of its penetration before it reaches the hull, and it cannot overmatch thin plates the way a solid shell does.

It gets no normalization at all, so a steeply sloped plate is measured at its full effective thickness.

Related terms

Spaced armorA thin plate mounted away from the hull, which strips explosive and shaped-charge shells before they reach the real armor.Premium ammunitionThe higher-penetration round available on nearly every gun, bought with credits and named after the days when it cost gold.PenetrationHow much armor a shell can defeat, in millimetres, rolled plus or minus 25 percent on every shot and compared against the effective thickness it hits.NormalizationThe few degrees a shell turns toward the perpendicular on impact, reducing the effective armor it has to cross.OvermatchThe rule that a shell with a caliber at least three times a plate's thickness cannot ricochet off it, no matter the angle.

Every World of Tanks term