Tips for the T57 heavy

[t___a 139]

I will be getting the T57 heavy and I was wondering if I could get adivce on tatics and crew and equipment setups

my crew will be this (I will go with the loader with safe stowage).

I plan to go with Vert, Stab, and vents for equiment.

[A_Chodeful 2,335]

T57 Heavy only has 4 crew.

 

So assuming you only have 3 crew skills with the 3rd one halfway researched

 

Commander: Sixth Sense, BiA, Repairs 

Loader: Safe Stowage (weak ammo rack), BiA, Repairs

Gunner: Snap-shot, BiA, Repairs

Driver: Preventative Maintenance (I'll explain) or Clutch-Braking, BiA, Repairs

 

Consumable Set-up:

 

For people with some money to burn and my set-up for the last 350 games in it:

 

Repairs (Either Premium or Standard depending on how badly you want to min-max tthis thing)

Standard First Aid Kits (you never need the premium first aid kit since you won't ever lose more than 1 crew at a time in this thing) 

Coca Cola 

 

Why Coca Cola instead of fire extinguisher? Simple, the T57 doesn't catch on fire from the front, only from shots to the rear side, so by preventing shots from going there, you won't ever catch on fire. I speak as someone who's played 350 games in the T57 without catching fire even once.

 

Fire extinguishers become pointless on this tank then, so what else do I add? I don't really need another repair kit or first aid kit, and the engine consumable doesn't really benefit me since my main advantage isn't mobility, but my burst and well-roundedness. So the only real choice left is Coca Cola. 

 

You'll want to get Preventative Maintenance as insurance though if you run this setup. 

 

For people who don't have much money to burn: 

 

Standard Repairs

Standard First Aid Kits

Premium Repair Kits

 

The idea here is to make sure that you never suffer from multiple damaged modules in battle, the premium repair kits confer a 15% HP boost to your modules, and having both the standard and premium repair kit at the same time allows you to repair relatively unimportant singular module damages on the cheap, but also gives you insurance against those hits from artillery that damage multiple modules at once. It's a nice set-up that's more effective than the following, mainly because fires aren't as crippling to this thing as module damage is, then again, that goes for all non-German tanks. 

 

For people who are pussies:

 

Standard Repairs

Standard First Aid Kits

Automatic Fire Extinguishers

 

Equipment Loadout: Coated Optics, Gun Laying Drive, Vertical Stabilizers

 

View range is simply too important in higher tiers to sacrifice for a small boost to everything else. The other two are just standard loadouts. 

Edited May 31, 2013 by Kewei

[brokensoldier 25]

Thank you for sharing, Kewei.

[Lord_Vale3 0]

Yes sounds like a lot of good advice Kewei, I'm looking forward to getting my T57 in the near future myself. Might even try that PrevM + Cola trick on some other tanks as well. 

[Deusmortis 4,618]

Tactically, I like to play this as the ultimate mistake punishment system.  Enemy pokes out, takes a shot at a teammate, and then eats 4 in return from you.  A not-as-good option is to trade 4 shots to 1.  Ideally, you want to trade 4 shots to 0, but that is not always possible.  Burning a shot on a track, so that the enemy cannot flee from your next 3 shots, is also viable. 

 

This thing exists to win by tearing massive chunks of HP from the enemy.  Not by taking hits.  Was averaging over 3k DPG in this, before foolishly joining some TCs.  And I'm not nearly the damage whore enlightened depleter of enemy HP that Kewei is.

[drynitz 0]

I like everything that Kewei posted except using optics over vents and no smooth ride. Most of the time you do not need to be the front tank so optics will not come into play as much. If you are using it for a tournament setting then the crew skills really need to be reworked since not revealing movements is a lot more important. Clutch braking doesn't seem like it would matter too much since the armor is pretty terrible all the way around. I would much rather have a little smaller aiming area. If you can afford the Coca Cola it is worth it over the AFE