Balthazars

I can't remember how I got mine, but I have one and recently started playing it to prepare a crew to go down the STB-1 line while it was one track. It's okay, fairly decent combination of DPM, gun handling, view range and mobility although it is not outstanding in any category except maybe DPM (at least for a 240-alpha medium). Top speed is a major letdown though, it's like the Pattons in that it only does 44kph, and it is soft so gets murdered by arty and HE slingers very easily. I do think the view range buff will be good for it, as it will give it something which is a noticeable strength to leverage. But overall it's still just a 240-alpha medium at tier 8, a category of tanks that has been power-crept beyond belief in the last few years. You will often struggle to do enough damage quickly enough to significantly influence a battle, and cannot even trade effectively against a number of same-tier peers who either have burst or just flat out bigger alpha. I wouldn't recommend it as a main credit earner as a result. Ironically in this case, the tech tree STA-1 is probably better given it has a notable DPM advantage for a 240-alpha medium. I have 49 games in mine, a surprisingly high 57.14% win rate, with 1,206 average DPG which is about on par for most of my 240-alpha mediums.

To me the T29 gun handling does feel pretty bad. I guess due to good aim time when you're sitting stationary hull-down you can probably snap okay at close targets because everything moves so slow (hull and turret) which would help with the dispersion, but the turret traverse especially makes the gun feel very derpy the moment you have to engage at anything beyond point-blank. I do have a crappy crew which doesn't help, but to me the firepower on the tank is one of the worst in the tier/class. I don't know how some people play it with the 90mm either. That thing also has worst-in-tier/class hull and movement dispersion (although turret dispersion is middle of the road) in return for competitive DPM and anemic alpha, plus the need to basically only fire gold given standard penetration is only 160, it doesn't feel like a viable alternative. It has a godlike turret for the tier, but the hull is utter trash and gets penned by same tier mediums without issue and it is slow so it is really a one-trick pony - find a place to hull down and hope you don't get rushed or GTFO. When you consider tanks like the Tiger I and KV-3 got buffs in recent years, I don't think the T29 is anywhere near as overpowering as it once was.

You're completely right because I had a total brain fade and got the tiers mixed up. The tier 5 Churchill is the one that is okay for the tier, the tier 6 is the absolute turd, and the Black Prince, like you said, while not good is workable in the right situations. I chalk it up to my mind refusing to properly remember grinding that line due to how traumatic the lower tiers generally are.

There are lots of good options for heavy tanks at Tier 7, and the 'best' likely depends on personal preference. For me, the top contenders are the Tiger I (especially after the alpha buff, it can hit hard and has excellent DPM and a big HP pool), the IS (alpha and mobility), and the O-Ni (actual armour and a scary derp, plus a pretty competitive non-derp option as well). I'm grinding the T29 currently and it doesn't feel that good outside of hull-down due to poor DPM, not-the-best gun handling and a paper hull and pretty mediocre mobility. It's strong but I don't think as flexible as the others. The 45TP is a decent all-rounder. The AMX (forget it's name) is okay with the 105 but is huge and soft. The Tiger P is garbage, despite the fact I somehow seemed to do really well in it. Compared to the Tiger I it has worse turret armour (bigger cupola and a worse mantlet), only marginally better hull armour (a few spots will bounce things), worse mobility, a worse hull profile (longer so harder to hide and has shoulders so cannot sidescrape), worse DPM (like, much worse, worst-in-tier worse), and now also worse alpha.

The tier 6 Churchill is okay. It's the tier 7 one that is the absolute turd. The absolutely trashed the best medium tank in the game by turning it into a rubbish heavy, so forget the VK30.01P. The KV2 is arguably the best because the HE means you can do unspeakable things to enemy tanks even when bottom tier, and of course for the memes. KV-85 is really good with the 85mm, basically a high DPM heavium at low tiers but it's technically not a tech-tree tank anymore. The ARL-44 is decent but fat and soft. That sort of leaves the VK 36.01 (H) and the T-150 as the only other candidates. Both have good guns and enough armour to actually function like a heavy in the tier (which is actually quite rare), although I have only played the former and not the latter.

Don't... tempt... me... Feeling increasingly salty about having only landed the Bisconte and not the GSOR or the Bourra as while it's not a bad tank, it just feels so limited I don't know how much I'll end up taking it out in future and its tech-tree line looks garbage at the moment. On a slightly more serious note, I hope the line about you going hungry due to buying lootboxes is said mostly in jest.

I'm not a purple player, but I am a pure solo player - so for what it's worth, in my opinion you'll likely stick with the old combination of Optics/Vstab/Rammer/Vents in many cases unless you want to try some funky stuff. Most tanks do not have good enough gun handling to drop the Vstab, but dropping the Rammer is viable on tanks where pure firepower isn't the be all and end all, or Optics if you have strong crews and also run food. Vents is more viable than before because it gets the bonus in any type of slot, so it's a good option if you're not using equipment from the 'specialised' equipment category on the tank (e.g. not using any surviability equipment on a heavy tank - Vents is a pretty good alternative to Optics here because with the bonus you're generally not loosing out too much in view-range for the added benefits elsewhere from higher crew skills). Tanks like the T-10 and 277 probably need to stick with Vstab, Vents and Rammer with good crews and food to be optimal but they can probably be quite fun with a Turbo because you will be fast enough to contest spots normally only soft meds and/or lights can get to that quickly. Hardening is only really useful on tanks with high HP for the class/tier or on tanks that can't afford to be tracked much and thus benefit from the full health track module on repair, so I pretty much only have used it on heavy casemate TDs and the Maus. I wouldn't use it on something like a French autoloader heavy for example. IRM is a good alternative to a Vstab on things that can't mount it, or to double stack with it if the gun handling is very poor. Again it's particularly strong on heavy casemate TDs or slow heavies because it boosts rotation speed as well. Turbo generally lets you do fun stuff depending on the type of tank you throw it on, especially if you like fast tanks.

Overall I agree, gimmicks are bad and in particular they are bad because they are a nightmare to balance. It's a fine tightrope between making a gimmick useful and making it absolutely broken. Autoloaders alone, as the first real gimmick introduced to the game, shows that the line between useless and overpowered is narrow indeed and very easy to cross to one side or the other. I understand why they feel they need them though, as otherwise the only thing that differentiates tanks in the game are some very minor differences - but where once they tried to give flavour through that (e.g. Chinese tanks had higher alpha and no gun depression relative to Russian tanks, which is a reasonable and easily distinguishable difference), but because they flavour seemed unpopular, they've gradually shifted increasingly towards the gimmicks. As for the tank in question - yeah, I'm disappointed. It looked initially like it could be an interesting tank in an interesting line (plus sexy look, although not quite a sexy as the new tier 10 reward medium, a bit salty about that given I'm not in a clan), but as it currently stands it would be simply awful. The poor DPM and awful gun handling and low HP already frustrates me hugely in the Bisconte, and this looks like all those weaknesses magnified, and you don't get anything useful in return.

I don't have most of the tanks listed, but for what it's worth based on observing them: the best two options are probably the T54-proto and the 112 given they have usable armour and decent enough guns. The Liberte is solid enough too. The two 105 TDs are okay if you don't mind playing paper TDs as they are both fast and have decent guns for the tier. Anything that is 240 alpha in the current game is basically trash however, so the FV4202 and the Jagtiger 88 are probably better to avoid. The Patriot has some use as a semi-mobile heavy with a strong turret, but I didn't like it much back before premium tier 8 mediums started getting more than 240 alpha and I wouldn't play it anymore now either. It also has really bad gun handling for such a pea-shooter which I think just really limits it. Maybe if you put a Turbo on it and play it like a slow medium it might be okay. Panther 88 got an alpha buff which is pretty nice (280 means it will roll for over 300 fairly regularly) but it's still a Panther hull which is garbage at tier 8. T92 is not that good as a light tank in the tier but not the worst either, but from what I recall you don't really like playing light tanks anyway?

I actually liked it quite a lot back in the day, although I used the top 10cm instead of the derp. I thought one of the good things about it back then was that both its derp and its non-derp options were actually viable, which really should have been how they did the entire line instead of giving the top tier tanks rubbish non-derp options, then giving them ridiculously good derp options, and then nerfing the derp options back into the ground without properly buffing the non-derp options again, basically just ruining them. The top 10cm here has stats comparable to the 105 on the T29 or the 122 on the IS for example, and is competitive on a heavy tank for the tier. The derp however just makes you more consistent, especially with all the armour buffs a lot of tier 8s and tier 9 heavy tanks received over the last few years.

Setting it up for vision like a light tank certainly feels very viable being on the receiving end of it in an actual light tank, especially one that has a crappy crew in it (RIP me deciding to start grinding Russian lights from tier 7 with zero-skill crews). Even without the turbo it is fast enough to contest key vision spots against some lights (especially lower tier ones), as @CraBeatOff notes you can push the vision so that only the two best tier 9 view-range lights outperform it (and even then only just) so you can out-spot most light tanks and it's stationary camo is about on par too. Given it has better HP and a vastly better gun as well, this thing absolutely shreds lights when set up for vision, leaving you free to then run amok on a vision-less enemy team. I've been feeling even more salty about not getting one into a lootbox.

+1 for anyone who vetoes Mountain Pass. What an abomination of a map, especially at high tiers where it is impossible from the south spawn to cross the gap next to the dip without dying or losing most of your HP, particularly if driving anything that goes less than 50. But at the same time you feel compelled to try and cross anyway, as the rest of the map is more or less freaking useless. How such a grossly imbalanced map survives in its current form utterly escapes me. After that for me it is Minsk, as others have noted, all the extra garbage on that map clutters it and makes trying to land shots a nightmare. I also just don't like the layout/design of the map in general. If I had more exclusions, Paris is kind of up there (very tank situational, some tanks you are locked out and unable to do much of use until the heavy brawl starts to break) but I would probably block Erlenberg next, then Paris, then Pilsen.

That was the point I was trying to make above. 1,500 base DPM on a tier 7 heavy is beyond garbage, the lowest by a huge margin as the previous lowest are all about just below 1,800 DPM. When you consider that it also only had 220 alpha for that trash DPM it makes you wonder how exactly it was supposed to do anything. Now it shares equal lowest DPM in the tier for a heavy tank, with I think from memory, the Tiger P (with slightly more alpha) and the AMX M4 45 using the 90mm (also with slightly more alpha, but no one should be using the 90mm on that tank anyway). Still a steaming turd.

Hmm, seems like the luck for the forums regulars is a bit more slanted towards the bad side this year. I kind of want the Bourra really badly but I keep on telling myself I cannot afford to throw another $130 bucks at this game... Must...Resist...

Yeah, but at least that thing has a bit shy of 1,900 DPM with it's rate of fire despite the sucky alpha. Don't get me wrong, the Black Prince has a bad gun, probably the single worst gun on a heavy tank in the tier, which is kind of it's 'thing' along with being slow with useless armour. But if this thing really has 220 alpha with a 9 second reload, it will have less than 1,500 DPM base. That is beyond garbage for the second lowest alpha in the tier on a heavy. For comparison, the Tiger P has about 1,800 DPM, and that too has an awful gun for the tier. If it goes live like this, it will be the worst tier 7 heavy in the game by some margin.