>>2073328
With good smoke micro you completely negate ATGMs, the retargeting buff changes nothing in practice. The only reason you bring tank APS at all is because of helicopters.
A ~385pt Sepv3 with APS is a bad value proposition because someone can just suicide a plane into it and nothing protects you from that. AA can punish a plane strike but they can't prevent it, so generally speaking anything notably more expensive than the disposable suicide plane that can kill it is a bad investment.
Plus a fully decked out SepV3 is literally only better than the SepV2 at piercing high-tier tanks (like other SEPs and Armatas) and surviving fire from enemy tanks. It has no inherent advantage over the V2 fighting IFVs, no advantage surviving volleys of ATGMs (100 extra CE armour doesn't do enough to require an extra hit, so they both die to the same number of ATGM shots) or helicopters or anything else. So why would you pay so many extra pts to protect it from things it shouldn't be fighting? You can bring 4 SepV2s and that's more than enough, you're never going to be fielding 6 expensive tanks in a single blob. Bring the V2s with APS to serve as your mainline tank and the V3s as dedicated tank duelists you only call in to deal with another player's elite tanks. 70pts for APS is just too much when the only reason you'd want to pay the extra pts for the chassis is for the stats that matter vs specific non-ATGM threats. Basically only against RU Guards tanks or Armoured/Marine tanks. At 315pts it's basically impossible for opposing tanks to trade cost-effectively vs a V3 and you're not crying if it gets bombed.
>>2073320
The HE shell is only 3 more damage per shot over the HEAT one. Vs infantry squads with 30-60hp it's a pretty trivial difference. The benefit of the HE shell is basically just that it's dropping 2 bodies per shot on its own while the HEAT shell is 1 damage shy. Counterintuitively, most of an Abram's anti-infantry firepower come from the 2x HMGs