Why are balance changes so slow?

Ectar:   Well it doesn't have to be extreme, even small changes can have massive effect. Bear in mind games that are quoted such as Dota 2 and LoL won't just do a single pass on a character and then never go back. You could argue that those games are balanced but then if you play either you know that some champions are almost never selected as they're viewed as inferior. As with any game that has any type of class system, if you put stuff in a "rank/list" you're always going to have characters/classes/vehicles at the top and some at the bottom.  People will naturally play the top ones and avoid the bottom. It doesn't always mean that the bottom one is useless or not fun, just that min/maxers will always have their top picks. When everything is competitive with everything at it's tier and everything is sorta equal, that's not necessarily a good situation. No one wants to play a character/class/vehicle that's just the same as 10 others and the only difference being how it looks.    We will never for example balance a tank based on it sitting in the open trading shots with another tank at 300 meters. Nor do we think "Ok lets balance the Panther based on fighting a Tiger, ok now balance it fighting an IS, ok now fighting a Comet, ok now a Jagpanther, ok now a T29" etc etc.  Armour thickness, armour angles, shell penetration, shell damage, module location - there is a whole host of variations that can affect the outcome of any fight.  Remember only we have the full statistics from the server and we look at the big picture.