Is French Arty underrated?

[Sexy_Dave 8]

I haven't extensively researched arty- but in pretty much every discussion I have read players seem to dismiss the French arty line as it doesn't do a lot of damage. (Or that's why they dismiss it as I understand it)

But it looks (again from a very brief overview) that in quite a few tiers, it reloads notably faster, and it isn't *that* much behind the curve in accuracy or aimtime. 

So wouldn't it actually be a fairly decent line? Seems to have decent range, above average mobility, average aim time and accuracy, and generally quicker reload.  

To me that seems like a pretty decent combo- yes you'd lose those monster hits, but you'd also get more shots in, so misses don't hurt quite as much.

Am I missing something or is the line not as bad as I've read?

Anyone have experience with it? (Still probably won't be as fun as the M44, but..)

[KnobbyHobbGoblin 1,002]

In general french arty is pretty good.  Doesn't hit as hard as some of the other lines (though they never seem to have any trouble penning me >____>), but the mobility is really nice to have.

The biggest reason to play it though is just to ruin other people's days at tier ten with your balance-dispensing autoloader.  You never know glee until you're perma tracking enemies while in an arty.

For maximum enjoyment, it is recommended that you platoon with 2 other bat arty drivers.

[Toxic_Turtles690 52]

3 minutes ago, KnobbyHobbGoblin said:

it is recommended that you platoon with 2 other bat arty drivers.

note; cancer & triggers may affect the enemy team if platooning 3 BCs

[Luna 3,443]

Yes, I quite enjoying being penned twice for 1k each from an autoloading arty.......

[Politx_Killer 803]

The tier 10 can be frustrating. Sitting around for 72+ secs waving your croissant in the air whilst your team gets steam rolled isn't that enjoyable. Overall the line rewards smart arty players that actually move with the team to get better angles/more accurate fire from being closer. 

[An_Arty_Player_Hits_You 473]

Lemme see.... they're all pretty terrible in their own right...

For tier 10's

TL:DR all the arty are "cancer" in their own right except for gw-e-100, thats the most underrated arty... also fuck arty

Batchat 58 relocates from death real fast, clicks on people for 4 times * 400 dmg minimum more or less, but after that, you wait for like 70 seconds... so.... thats the "balance" for more or less potential to spread some batchat "love" to either 1 tank for times of 4 tanks in a span of like 10 seconds..... 8/10 for fuck you aka I'll click you 4 times for more dmg than you want

T92... Fuck you and everything RNG stands for, it'll fly straight and true into everyone and everything and splash everything or Direct hit everything....like a truck.... downsides... its slow.... pretty much it... 10/10 of fuck you. aka fuck you, rngesus is my bitch

CGC, See T92 with more gun arc..... yup.... minus some range and its slow also..... 9/10 of fuck you aka... the better/shittier t92

Obj 261.... See T92/CGC but with way less splash, way less gun arc, still will fly straight and true and rounds will get to enemy tanks REAL fast because of it... oh yea... pretty fast reload for arty so... 10/10 of fuck you, lazer td rounds from the sky bitch

GW-E100.... most underrated tier 10 arty because it doesnt hit the hardest, or have a bullshit 4 round arty clip, or have stupid gun arc... or stupid accuracy.... so.... its just.... the most mediocre middle man arty that no one cares about.... you know.... basically embodies the middle child of the family that no one likes because they play arty 7/10 of fuck you aka the child everyone hates b/c its mediocre at everything it does

2 hours ago, Sexy_Dave said:

yes you'd lose those monster hits, but you'd also get more shots in, so misses don't hurt quite as much.

 

oh yes... i'll totally miss splashing for 900, when I splash for 200, 250 then direct hit for 450, 400 -_-

 

oh wait.. yea that was an example on a GER Super HT... numbers vastly increase the lesser armored it is.... get cancer yet?

[_Steve 226]

34 minutes ago, An_Arty_Player_Hits_You said:

Obj 261.... See T92/CGC but with way less splash, way less gun arc, still will fly straight and true and rounds will get to enemy tanks REAL fast because of it... oh yea... pretty fast reload for arty so... 10/10 of fuck you, lazer td rounds from the sky bitch

 

AP doesn't splash 

[Cunicularius 4,543]

'Fun' maybe, but not competitive with the exception of the tier 8.

[Tedster59 989]

52 minutes ago, Cunicularius said:

'Fun' maybe, but not competitive with the exception of the tier 8.

This.  french arties got hit the hardest by the 0.8.6 nerfs as they have not enough accuracy, not enough damage, not enough splash, and not enough reload.

[zapyoug 2,141]

The tier 5 arty is a pretty great fuck you to everyone and everything involved with a lazer gun and 330dmg/223pen apcr rounds and a 10 second reload just in case you wanted an S35 CA that could shoot over walls

[Tedster59 989]

55 minutes ago, zapyoug said:

The tier 5 arty is a pretty great fuck you to everyone and everything involved with a lazer gun and 330dmg/223pen apcr rounds and a 10 second reload just in case you wanted an S35 CA that could shoot over walls

forgot about that one, yeah.  run food + decent crew, spam APCR, troll the crap out of stuff with an ARL 105 at T5 that can shoot from beyond draw range.

[An_Arty_Player_Hits_You 473]

3 hours ago, steveaus said:

AP doesn't splash 

 

4 hours ago, An_Arty_Player_Hits_You said:

10/10 of fuck you, lazer td rounds from the sky bitch

 

 

[WhatTheSkara 345]

they might be underrated in alpha damage, but damn, they're accurate as fuck..

in order to miss a target in a turreted SPG like the bat 155 55 you must have some serious issues, same goes with the autoloading balance dispenser..

they're also fast, not M53 fast, but stll they can relocate pretty quickly

[Spartan96 1,026]

Tier 8 and 9 make it work but the tier 10 is by far my least favorite arty in the game.

[sahtila 95]

Tier 8 is good enough that its used in CW's (another choice is usually US M40/43). Higher tiers french arties are most fun to play as they can use their mobility to find new odd places to go with arty and find new lines of fire. Or flee yolo scouts.  But what comes to doing  pure damage they are bit behind compared to other equivalent tier arties.

[FavreFan4ever 281]

If all arty were balanced like high tier French arty, we wouldn't be calling for an arty rebalance. IMO they suck.

-no splash (3.91m splash radius will have your enemies quaking behind their rocks!)

-"accuracy" is a lie, you are at the mercy of RNG (lel Obj. 261 gets better accuracy too, balance comrade!)

-no alpha

-flat gun arc (Is that Westfield? You're screwed!)

As someone who played the French arty up to tier 7 (and the rest on the test server), I have no intention of progressing up the rest of the line. If I'm playing arty, it's because I want to ruin someone's day, and French arty is the worst arty to do that with. The tier 10 is the only one I'm afraid of, and even then you don't see many of because the rest of the line is so subpar.

[Lockhart77 667]

11 hours ago, zapyoug said:

The tier 5 arty is a pretty great fuck you to everyone and everything involved with a lazer gun and 330dmg/223pen apcr rounds and a 10 second reload just in case you wanted an S35 CA that could shoot over walls

This, so much this, fail tooned the tier 4 one and able to pen KV 3 and Tiger P with its APCR 105

[Felicius 170]

Frenchies have same guns as germans, just one tier higher. Also, Soviets and USA have the biggest guns, so pew pew arty...

having 3x bat 58 in enemy team is a route to garage for first to stick out...then they will get steamrolled before reload. As a heavy driver I loathe big ones, 4x hits by bat hurts about the same as one from T 92. 

Russian OP td mode arty is the most useful in randoms, shooting AP in the brawl zone makes heavies reluctant to push. Besides, most brawl zones are flattened , so arc is not so important any more (sacred valley anyone?).

[Johnny_Wishbone 12]

On 5/13/2016 at 10:32 PM, zapyoug said:

The tier 5 arty is a pretty great fuck you to everyone and everything involved with a lazer gun and 330dmg/223pen apcr rounds and a 10 second reload just in case you wanted an S35 CA that could shoot over walls

It's so much fun to pump APCR into people's front plates from beyond draw range and watch them get butthurt.

It's also super mobile for arty, easily on a par with any same tier heavy tank, and better in many cases.

[Hally 126]

Tier 7 is pretty poor. It is essentially a tier 6 german/russian arty with slightly better mobility. (Not enough mobility improvement to be relevant in most battles).

Tier 8 arty is quite decent, with good mobility, accuracy, and decent aim time and good RoF. This is more than enough to compensate for lower alpha and splash.

Tier 9 arty is quite decent for good players who will move with the team. Abusing the turret and making engagements 600m away, often against side armor works wonders. It sucks for potatoes who click from the cap all day.

Tier 10 arty is just way too inconsistent. The insanely long reload can cause many missed opportunities. When rng loves you, great; when rng doesn't love you, you will be in for frustration as the driver.

 

I have no experience with the lower tiers since I went straight to the tier 7 from amx 12t (back in old tech tree days when it was a tier 5)

[dualmaster333 3,324]

I've only played the Tier 7-9 so far. General trends I've seen:

• Terrible splash - For the most part you only do damage with direct hits (splash damage is low even against low armor vehicles)
• Weak alpha - Even on direct hits you'll often only do 300-500 damage which doesn't swing an engagement as hard as higher alpha arty.
• No high penetration round - 185 pen HEAT just isn't reliable enough to make it worth shooting. And even if you did pen it is only 720 damage which isn't that much better than a non-pen HE round. Meanwhile the tier 6 M44 packs 240 pen/700 damage HEAT rounds...
• "More accurate" guns - Unfortunately, despite the gun stats being better I apparently don't get direct hits more often than less accurate guns (hit rates on French arty are similar to my US/Brit arty).
• Pretty good mobility - Really quite useful on arty. You can advance with the battle and stay in the 400-600 meter range. You can also run from collapsing flanks. I found I stayed alive until the end of the game far more in the Lorraine arties because I could escape and relocate when needed.

Tier 7 - Lorraine 155 50

This thing is a steaming pile of garbage. It would be worst in class except for the steaming pile of crap that is the Crusader SP. I'd rather have an M44 with tier 7 matchmaking over this thing.

Tier 8 - Lorraine 155 51

This was better than I expected. Probably the second best in tier behind the M40/43. The mobility is good enough to stick close to the fight which effectively makes your gun more accurate and improves your ability to hit shots. Which is much needed because the effectiveness of your 1250 alpha is starting to fall off.

Tier 9 - Bat 155 55

I don't have too many games in this yet but thus far it feels okay. Definitely not as good as the M53/M55 or FV3805. Your 1250 alpha just doesn't hit hard enough against the increasingly large number of armored vehicles you are fighting. Mobility is disappointing (I didn't realize it was a significant downgrade from the tier 8). I guess it is still good enough to keep up with the advance or run away. The turret adds some flavor and certainly makes it easier to shoot and scoot so you can more effectively relocate while still getting shots out. I'll soon have BIA combined with Coffee, so it will be fun to try out the 0.63 accuracy...

[Madner Kami 405]

33 minutes ago, dualmaster333 said:

• "More accurate" guns - Unfortunately, despite the gun stats being better I apparently don't get direct hits more often than less accurate guns (hit rates on French arty are similar to my US/Brit arty).

 

That's a direct result from the interaction between shot/impact trajectory and shot dispersion mechanics. The flat arc leads, ironically, to a lower effective accuracy (they are still more accurate than other arties, but not as much as the stats would imply), which in conjunction with the naturally low splash radius, makes them really suffer if you do not hit. If WG had done the math at any point, french arties would need to have the highest arcs and the arties with the biggest splashes, would get the flattest arcs.

Another one result of them not understanding the implications of their own mechanics is the high penetration of the US arty-HEAT shells. Given the general trajectory, there's absolutely no reason that you need a lot of penetration, quite the contrary. Coming from almost directly above, you need like 50 pen to reliably go through almost every tank in the game. Conversely, the french arties tend to hit the thickest parts of armor with the most sloping and spacing, due to low trajectory, making their low-pen HEAT-shells absolutely useless in 95% of the cases. Funnily enough, french arties tend to have the highest HE-penetration in relation to their caliber, when all that matters within the operational boundaries of the french arties' guns would actually be alpha or splash (both help overcoming thick armor, while having 2 to 5% more HE-penetration than the other guns does exactly this not).

I still love my french arties simply because of the mobility that the chassis generally provide. Being able to flex into good positions is something I really miss on the other arties.

[dualmaster333 3,324]

5 minutes ago, Madner Kami said:

That's a direct result from the interaction between shot/impact trajectory and shot dispersion mechanics. etc

I didn't really think about it before, but I guess the hit rate in your arty stats counts a splash as a hit?

But yes, low shell arc is generally bad because if you miss by an inch you miss by a mile. It makes it a little easier to hit moving targets because of the shorter shell travel time, but you're often shooting at tanks that aren't moving much at all to begin with.

[sr360 4,987]

2 hours ago, dualmaster333 said:

I didn't really think about it before, but I guess the hit rate in your arty stats counts a splash as a hit?

But yes, low shell arc is generally bad because if you miss by an inch you miss by a mile. It makes it a little easier to hit moving targets because of the shorter shell travel time, but you're often shooting at tanks that aren't moving much at all to begin with.

1. I'm pretty sure hit rate excludes splashes.

2. Low arc also makes the arty frustratingly map-dependent, as high arc negates obstacles. 

The turrets are nice, because you bloom so little when changing targets. But 1250 is just blech.

[Tedster59 989]

2 hours ago, dualmaster333 said:

I didn't really think about it before, but I guess the hit rate in your arty stats counts a splash as a hit?

the statistic doesn't count it, though it probably should.