Monkey

I stopped putting this and Snap Shot as early skills on ages ago, because no matter how you put it you'll benefit more from BiA and Rep anyway

Medium tanks without a radioman/or loader cannot become a radioman.
As a medium tank VR is always nice to have, but of the commander would have to be extremely high skilled to have key skills such as BiA, Repair, 6th sense, Recon and situational awareness, the difference between a 2 skilled commander with only Repair and 6th sense and a 5 skilled commander with SA+Recon+BiA is about a good 30 meters of view range with no downside, thats almost a free Optics.

Kinda hard to notice stuff like that when you're spamming 250mm HEAT at them, isnt it?

status update worthy. about a year ago it got LFP buffed to 200 effective. 

I think it's definitely just not being used to the backgrounds. After a few months things will feel like normal, again.

I just had a match that was so fun that I decided to make a vanity thread.


Carry pants!!! At the end, I had to solo a 1-shot Challenger, full HP Caern and full HP T20 in a Hwk 12. My heart is still pounding.
I don't think I was aggressive enough at the beginning, and I benefited greatly from facing bad players. However, I was pretty proud of whittling down the T20 while playing hide & seek from the Caern. The ending should teach everyone to train repairs first in your heavy tanks!!!
http://wotreplays.eu/site/4156703#windstorm-monjardin-hwk_12
If you didn't know, the power-to-weight ratio on the Hwk 12 is amazeballs!
 

You can't really fairly compare anything to the caern, caern is just batshit insane and so is the Caern AX.
Better comparison would be to the patriot.
2439 vs 2085 stock dpm : fucking hell, 2439 stock dpm is insane, patriot was hailed as the high dpm HT but its got nothing on this
0.31 vs 0.36 acc: 0.05 accuracy is huge, thats the difference between skorp and Rhm's 12.8cm.
Way better turret, Patriot has shot traps on the lower mantlet that will make shots go straight into enginedeck, plus weak 180mm plate right below mantlet that is penned often, Caern AX has no such thing.

For continued updates and inclusion of the newer tanks, WoTLabs has switched to the XVM expected values for the WN8 scores.
Cheers.

It’s really good. Not as OP as made out to be, balance on par with 5A and SConq
5k dpgable for sure

No.
Well, that depends...

I don't play tanks anymore, so I couldn't say! I'd think the new MM is the biggest change to the tank; having much fewer T7s and T8s in your games would make the 1600 burst autoloader a fair bit less effective than it used to be. Tanks have gotten a bit better armored, but 300 HEAT should still be enough, and the maps are identical to how they were back in January.  The entire line has gotten weaker, but the Emil 2 is probably the least affected of the T8/9/10 just because it is the only one without major pen issues.

If they go through with these armor changes, then the Object 257 probably isn't better than the T-10. The side armor seems more troll than good. It definitely had good armor the first go around, but I'd need to try it out with these changes to be sure.
In any event, your best bet is to wait until release and test it yourself before making a decision. It's all just speculation at this point.

Yeah that sound better :-).

Sort of. You get a free tier 9 if you have the T10 in your garage. And a free tier 9 if you have the obj 430 in your garage, since you already owned a ten.

I don't think so, you wont get the 430 as Tier 9 if you do not already have it purchased as Tier 10. But thats just me from interpreting this
No idea how its working now on the test server.

Nah, it's much less comfy than the old E5. -8 gun dep and the ridiculous drivewheel absorptions was personally what made it so easy to play. 430u actually requires map awareness so old E5 was probably a bigger cancer to the game than the 430U will be, even if the 430U will be better for the lucky few who actually has some brain activity while playing the game

Shorter version:
Tier 8 Frenchie - load HEAT (for pens on side and rear)
Tier 9+10 Frenchies - load HE (HEAT on sides for higher probability)
Tier 8+9 Brit TDs - load HEAT (50/50 chance to pen sides, 100% rear)
Tier 10 Brit TD - load HE and getdabooty

B-B-B-B-B-B-OMBADIER!!!!


Also, I'm enjoying my premium T49:

IIRC spaced armor for years doesn't affect ramming damage. 

This tank actually makes me miss all chat sometimes

I haven't played the tank (or really the game, for that matter) since the T10 LTs introduction some time back, so I've been super happy with what happened to the T49 in the meantime. The T9 version's mobility/gun handling improvements make the tank so much nicer to play, and the extra hitpoints let you play extra lazy. True American comfort has been bestowed on my favorite LT! I'm not really caught up on if the MM weight of a T9 LT is worse than the old T8s, but it certainly feels worth it if this was the result. So good!

Cats can't drive. She's a cutie. 
OK WOTLABS
Given that this game hemorrhages unica I've been working hard on keeping people playing this game by showing them CHODEFU - THE WAY TO THE BUTTZ. In the past couple of weeks I've recruited from within the ranks of -G- (mostly by @dualmaster333 's glorious GIFs) to get some people playing this great tank. We've had MajorIssuez, Iron, Giggles101x and GAIMER all actively playing the T49 and 3 marking it, along with a few who are in progress.
This has allowed me to validate some tactics and ideas that we've been kicking around for months now. But it also helped me with my eternal equipment dissatisfaction.
Best equipment set-ups
The spotter - Vstab, Optics, Vents - my most run one. Vents adds a lot. Currently running this with improved versions of the Vstab and Vents. Its got 520 view range, and vents adds all the little nice things.
The comfort compromise - Vstab, Optics, eGLD - this is where I ran most of my first games in tier 8. It still spots well with optics, but the GLD makes using the gun a lot easier, especially in brawls and vs mid-range 
MAX DPM - Vstab, Rammer, Vents - you can shoot more often. You can't see shit (47X view range) BUT you shoot all the time, and with accuracy. Pairs well with a spotter chode friend. 
Friend @GAIMER is going to try out GLD, Rammer, Optics as a set-up, but its not clear to me that this will be any good. YMMV. 

While it might be easier to compare the Leo and Super Conq today, it's important to remember that back then, the Leopard's advantages would have amounted to far more than they do today. Giving a 2013 purple the choice between your listed advantages and the Leo's 200% more mobility, several orders of magnitude more camo, 10m higher view range, and 40% more shell velocity would have been a far tougher call, predominantly because they were all usable & abusable on almost every map. And like you mentioned, the SConq is probably the most advantaged tank to compare the Leo to, considering it's overpowered even by today's standards. Compared to something more tame, the choice would have been even more difficult.
It's really hard to really overstate how powerful vision dominance was in the vision meta. It was often possible to win entire flanks (or even games) without ever risking a hit, something the Conq's lack of mobility and neon-sign of a camo value would have held it back from. If vision ever became as powerful as a tool as it used to be, I can absolutely ensure that the Leopard would need very little help to become relevant again.

I traded my Jt88 for this, will see how it is.

Who said he's playing his own accounts? Did you not know, we're all Carbonward's account?