Balthazars

Unfortunately I am more or less purely solo, so not a luxury I can afford. I did play it without Optics from memory back in the day for quite some time (used Vents instead from recollection) but not sure if I want to go back to being semi-blind. Gun handling is pretty good, it might do okay without a Vstab?

Only played a handful of games in the E50 as I continue to try and do the stupid ramming mission. Not feeling that turret armour buff, probably because most of the time I was still getting shot in the lower plate... extra penetration is nice though, and it still performs very solidly as an all-rounder. Been thinking about putting a turbo on it given it's a bit slow to accelerate, but not sure what to drop from Vstab/Rammer/Optics for it.

Thread necro! As I continue my grinds through some light-tank lines through 2020, now finished the BatChat 12-T. So, for an average player who also happens to not be particularly good in light tanks, this one is...kind of good, but in some ways, a bit frustrating. The overall package has a good balance, camo is pretty good as the size is small (well, it is long, but it's low to the ground), the gun is decent for the tier and the role, although the pen definitely means you will struggle to pen anything with armour from the front. Gun handling is okay, but not outstanding, especially at long range, and mobility is pretty good. I found the view range limiting - only 380m - which means you need a good crew to get the numbers up to something respectable, although kind of expected for the tier. It's one of the better tier 8 lights, although that's not necessarily saying that much in the current state of the game. I would say that it really struggles when bottom tier, as tier 9 scouts (especially EBRs) crap all over it, but it also struggles against the Even-90 and the LT-423 as they both outperform in terms of gun and camo and will outspot you regularly assuming they are not driven by potatos. Ran Optics, CVS and Vstab. 120 games to finish the grind, 55% win rate, 891 average damage (yes, I'm bad), 822 average assist (pretty good for me). It's fun at times, but if you want to play a light tank at this tier, you're probably better off with one of the premiums mentioned above.

Thread necro in late 2020! So, what to say about this tank for an average player (albeit quite a bad light tank driver)... Well, it's certainly not good, but at the same time I don't really think it's bad either. Frustrating probably sums it up very well. The positives: it's got good mobility overall, is reasonably small so has good camo, and with a decent crew can put out some nice view range numbers (mine has 461 with Optics, BIA, Recon and Situational Awareness not yet maxed out) so it can work well as a passive spotter. The turret can occasionally troll the odd lower-tier gun. When it works, the gun is punchy for a light tank, with good alpha. The negatives: overall has zero armour, so T49 derps and HE from wheeled bastards will pen you with ease and with the former, can one-shot (or very close to it) you and make your life miserable. Suffers badly to arty too. Penetration isn't very good, especially at range. The turning circle is pretty bad, and the turret traverse is really darned slow for a light tank, meaning that for example, an EBR-90 can not only out-circle you, but your turret can't rotate fast enough to keep up with him either while he's circling you. Speaking of wheeled bastards, they crap all over this tank. The awful: the gun handling. Oh the gun handling. So. Bad. Takes an age to aim in. Even aimed in, it sprays stuff all over the shop, which when coupled with the penetration loss at range means lots of bounces and forget about hitting weak-spots. Trying to hit stuff on the move is also quite the dice-roll. 120 games to finish the grind, for a 53.33% win rate. Only 993 DPG (laughably bad I know, but as I said, I'm a bad light tank driver), but with 932 average assist , that is my best after my M48 Patton (which has over 500m view range). Running Optics, Vstab (I feel like I can't drop it if I don't want the gun to be completely useless) and CVS in the spotting slot (I felt that given I am over 450m view range that the CVS would give me more utility on those foliage-heavy maps - don't have the spare credits to try alternatives though). Part of me enjoys it from time to time, you get those games where the gun behaves itself mostly and you can put out some decent damage and play almost like a quasi-medium. Also games where you can get to a good passive/semi-active spotting location and put out some strong assist numbers. Then come the games where you get locked out of areas because wheeled bastards crap all over your tank, the gun misbehaves and you can't connect anything, and of course the moments when you spot everything and no-one shoots anything (the last game I played was a tier 10 game on El Halluf where I spotted 9 of the enemy team first, including their EBR and TDs and Heavies moving in the open and I got a grand total of 93 assist, and 97 damage kill-shot on the enemy EBR. 6 shots fired, 2 hits, that 1 pen) which just make you want to break your keyboard.

It's pretty awful no matter how you cut it, but with new equipement I think there are more options for it now. If I were doing the grind now instead of last year when I actually did it, I would likely go Turbo (needs that extra mobility given it is huge with no armour) and stack gun handling equipment such as IRM/Vstab/EGLD/IAU as @lavawing suggested. The gun handling on the French heavy autoloaders is awful, so anything to mitigate that should help improve it's one strong point.

Nuts, it looks really sexy, and the new line seems like it will be fun/interesting too...looks like I may be throwing some money at WG again in the near future...

While I am not a F2P player, I am quite stingy in what I do throw at WG, so I am someone who pretty much always retrains crew for 90% using credits only. In my experience, it does not really matter too much as if you have experience boosters or the like and are semi-competent, it doesn't take that long to get your crew back to 100% from 90% That XP hit is also less noticeable as your crew gets better too, and with BIA and Vents on a tank for example, you barely even notice the drop in base skill level of the crew and you'll still gain the benefit of things like 6th, repairs etc. that you have trained up. Personally I find it quite a good balance between being efficient with XP-loss and throwing money at WG.

I agree that Turbo really helps it, as you say, being able to more reliably get to those important spots and relocate more reliably can make a big difference in some games. I ran about 20 games it with a Turbo, Rammer, Optics and Optics directives (turbo replaced Vents) setup to compensate for the loss of VR from dropping Vents and found it quite nice. I'm too cheap to run food and the optics directives can be bought for those otherwise useless anniversary coins so I figured why not. As per my little review above, even though it's clearly not the best in the current meta, it's just fun to play.

I'm pretty sure it does, and that it's one of the reasons for the high number of ridiculous bounces, because there is spaced armour all over all of the models, on the front and sides especially. Not sure about less health recovery from corpse looting, given that without it winning a fight if pretty meaningless as you'd be easy pickings for whoever you came across next, but less XP from the corpse I agree with as it would nerf vultures significantly. Also yes to improved rewards. Apart from tokens and maybe bonds, there is just no reason to play this game-mode. As I noted, at least with FL people jump in because of the credit and XP gains.

Ugh, I just need one more level to get one more of the tokens to get my tier 9 reward tank (going for the Char, that looks interesting and I don't have any fun/good tier 9 French tanks) and then I can ignore this crappy game-mode. I echo all the comments about how luck plays so much into it, especially early on where spawn can have such a huge impact. For example, one game for me: French light tank. Spawn. Pick a direction and drive forward. Literally inside 15 seconds 6th goes off, I am spotted. I can see nothing which means he is behind me. He gets the first shot for free, which basically means he wins the duel unless he gets unlucky with RNG or screws up. But due to the crappy vision mechanic, I get unlucky in which way I chose to rotate to try and lock onto him, which means he gets a second shot before I can fire my first. Dead inside 2 minutes and there was literally nothing I could have done because he got lucky in the direction he went in and got the drop on me. While monotonous as all heck, at least FL gives you genuine rewards, i.e. being a near-unparalleled credit grinding option with premium tanks, and at least climbing ranks is mostly down to your own skill as opposed to luck. This game-mode does have potential, but for me personally it would require major re-works to be fun - currently I rage (way) more in this game-mode than I do in randoms!

299mm-pen HEAT on a tier 8??

So I've just finished grinding this. 90 games, 53.33% win rate, 2,324 DPG with 421 average assist. As I've been commenting elsewhere, I actually really like it. It has excellent gun handling for a 750-alpha strike meaning it does very well in brawls and/or second-line support. Derpy shell velocity does mean that it is a poor sniper and it should not be used as such. The armour is very weak to gold and high-pen AP rounds but will troll quite a lot of people and can be used to bully when top tier if you can hide the lower plate (or if people just panic). Stock grind is okay, as the stock gun is the top gun from the tier 8 which has respectable alpha and gun handling, but the top gun really makes this tank. Standard rounds are very serviceable, you get 395-pen HEAT which is just ridiculous for those times when you don't want to aim, and a very nice HE round which lets you do fun things like one-shot paper tier 8 tanks/tank destroyers or take 500-HP chunks out of hull down tanks like Chieftans, Super-Conqs and mediums. Running Rammer in the firepower slot, Hardening for the extra HP and track-module health (very useful) and IRM for the further gun handling buff and improved traverse speed. Yes, it won't win you a lot of games consistently but it's actually fun. The damage stats for me are pretty amazing, more or less best in the tier (better than the T-10 and Object 430, my best performers for a long time), the only tier 9 I have in which I perform better is the Leo PTA. Win rate is obviously pretty crappy, but given it's a casemate TD, and I generally suck at TDs, this feels pretty amazing. Highly recommend.

I don't think the speed helps this that much. It's kind of fast enough for what it needs to do, which is get forward to the main brawl and second-line. As @sr360 notes, the gun handling feels amazing with IRM, and the rotation speed is also very useful on a casemate TD. With IRM you can pull snap-shots on anything inside 200m very reliably which makes it great for brawling. My other equipment was Hardening, mostly for the track repair and increased health, making you very hard to track for long periods of time, which can really save your bacon in a brawl. The overall HP gain is a nice bonus too (gets you to just under 2k health, very nice for a tier 9 TD). Last is the Rammer in the firepower slot, which can push your DPM to just over 3,000 with a good crew. I'm finding a lot of success with it, although not quite finished the grind. Winning is a bit of an issue because I'm not the best player, but damage performance is close to best in the tier for me. @GehakteMolen - unfortunately the tier 8 does not get any faster even once elite. It is very slow for how little armour it has. Pretty painful stock grind too, although it gets better once you at least have the middle gun (the same gun as on the premium WZ TD).