About HEAT & HESH

[Noobster42]

What the different? They seems similar to me

[Arpente Reves]

They function really differently. Very quickly
HEAT is like a chemical AP, more powerful but more easily defeated by different armors
HESH is like a HE shell but with way better penetration over the angle and more components damages

[Noobster42]

Thank for the answer, they confuse me

[Valrynn the Dragoness]

Originally posted by Noobster42:

What the different? They seems similar to me

HEAT ammo breakdown


HEAT, or High Explosive Anti Tank munitions are often your alternative to AP ammunition on most cannon-armed vehicles. Typically they have slower velocities than AP rounds, but conversely, do not lose penetration factor over distance. HEAT shells deal more damage the thinner the armor they penetrate, depending on how much leftover penetration there is after going through the armor, so they're ideal for shooting things with not much armor. They also deal more damage to modules than AP, and have a 4x higher chance than AP to start a fire if you damage an engine with them. They can also penetrate tanks at angles that AP would ricochet at. When HEAT shells penetrate a tank, they have a "damage cone" whereas AP just has a straight line. Any modules or crew caught in this cone take damage too.

HEAT shells also have some downsides besides velocity. They are typically less accurate than AP rounds. As well, against thick armor, even if they penetrate, sometimes they will deal *less* damage than an AP round due to how their damage is calculated, and their low base damage, so they have to rely on penetrating thin armor. As well, because most tanks are typically designed to *stop* HEAT type ammo, the weakspots for HEAT shells and AP shells tends to differ quite a lot. For example, explosive reactive armor found on some vehicles will pretty much do nothing to block AP rounds, but for weaker HEAT shells, they will be unable to penetrate through the ERA at all. Composite armor is also very good at blocking HEAT. What this means is that for most HEAT shells, you will have to learn new places to fire them at targets compared to AP ammo. Spaced armor like sideskirts and cage can also reduce the effectiveness. Higher risk, higher reward, in a way.

HEAT ammo comes in many flavors. Of course there is just plain old HEAT. You also have Anti Tank Guided Missiles, slow moving ammo that you can guide and usually has very high penetration or damage but typically gets blocked by Active Protection Systems, something you encounter often at higher tiers. Some even half self-guidance! Rockets are like ATGMs in terms of velocity, but are usually less accurate and cannot be guided. Multi-purpose HEAT rounds can deal small amounts of damage should the round strike armor that is too thick to penetrate, but not so thick that it would completely block the damage from the ammo but typically have less penetration than other HEAT shells.Tandem warhead HEAT shells can penetrate ERA kits and spaced armor more effectively than normal ones. Top attack ATGMs fly above the roof of the tank before exploding, exploiting the relatively thin armor on the roof of a tank in exchange for dealing typically low damage. Some of these ammo types are more rare than others.



HESH ammo breakdown

HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) or HEP (High Explosive Plastic) munitions are basically high penetration HE rounds.Of all shell types, these tend to have the most devastating effects when they successfully penetrate a vehicle, heavily damaging crew and modules, with a high chance to set tanks on fire like HEAT does. HESH style ammo can penetrate tanks at even crazier angles than HEAT can. Even a single penetrating hit from HESH, while it may not deal as much raw damage to health as HEAT will, can devastate the internals of a vehicle. Locking the turret, injuring the crew, and so on. The damage cone of HESH shells is even larger than HEAT.

The problems with HESH are many to offset it's potential power. For one thing, they usually have the worst accuracy and velocity of any shell type. Secondly they are even more heavily affected by spaced armor, composite armor, cage, and ERA kits, giving them different weakspots compared to HEAT and AP. HESH shells can be blocked by even the light cage armor found on vehicles like the Rosomak M1 or M1128 Stryker MGS, or spaced armor like that found on the M8. This makes penetrating tanks with these aspects very difficult typically as you advance up the tiers, and the time spent trying to penetrate a tank with HESH might be better spent firing AP or HEAT at it.

PELE or Penetrating Enhanced Lateral Effect ammo is a mix between armor piercing and HESH ammo, combining their aspects. It has less penetration than AP, but more velocity than HESH. It has less module and crew damage per hit than AP, but is able to be fired more rapidly and more accurately. The damage cone is not as wide, but it can penetrate deeper and is not affected by the typical HESH weaknesses as much.

HESH and HEP for all intents and purposes perform the same way in game.

Despite sharing the ammo color in the garage, Thermobaric ATGMs are NOT HESH shells. The developers have not updated the color yet. They are basically just guidable HE ammo, but can destroy lots of modules and crew similar to HESH due to their huge blast radius on impact.

A special kind of HESH, PISH, or Penetrating Intelligent Squash Head, is found on the Challenger 2 ATDU. Unlike other HESH shells, PISH is actually capable of penetrating spaced armor extremely well. In fact, it can penetrate the front of a Merkava 4M turret because of this aspect. It is unique to this vehicle and causes massive devastation on impact, but still suffers from low accuracy and velocity, and is typically blocked by ERA kits and composites. It can penetrate tanks much easier than standard HESH, but don't expect it to act like AP.


Hope this helps!

Your sleepy friendly neighbourhood official AW Discord chat moderator

[CMDR Sweeper]

I guess the short version is, HEAT is nice and dandy, but its highest damage potential isn't as high as you can get with HE and HESH.

HE will usually yield the highest damage numbers, the drawback?
It sucks at penetrating, but smacking a soft skinned BMP at T4-T5 without ERA or anything defensive will make you see nice 800-900 to 1000 damage numbers.
And if you get the engine deck of a MBT you can see the same.
HESH behaves the same way, just a bit of damage traded for a bit better penetration.

HEAT on the other hand is usually a little higher damage than the AP rounds, it isn't affected as much of armor angles and will never overpenetrate.
But the armors will usually catch up to it, and ERA will ruin your day, and for light skinned vehicles there are better choices, but this is a good choice for tanks if you have a high enough penetrating number.

So in short, the ammo choices you should load varies depending on tier, vehicle and what you are doing.
At some higher tiers you will find HESH, HE and to some extent, HEAT being useless.
So for one of my tanks I leave those shells at home and load up on AP, because at that tier that is the only round that works and gives a reliable damage output.
And in another vehicle the tables change and HEAT is the one to use.