T42 tier VIII USA premium with TV show tie in.

[arthurwellsley 129]

Now available on the EU server a USA medium with a tie up with a TV show on Amazon. Comes with two separate crews from the TV show, so eight free BIA crew members in one package. The package comes with both a 3D and a 2D style. Some think the style fine others think it ugly. Guess it depends on your view.

 

The one interesting selling point of the TL1C was that the voice actors had a completely different script for the normal actions which is quite a difference. I have not bought this package and so do not know if the T42 "the boys" crew have a different script from the normal. EDIT Apparently these eight crew members use the standard script which is a slight disappointment.

[Rexxie 10,757]

Kinda curious about the tank itself, tanks.gg stats look kinda... mediocre? It's like a Pershing sidegrade. Better turret armor and 40 alpha, but that gun handling is kinda trash for an american med. The standard rounds are also some of the worst in tier & APCR are some of the best, so it's another goldspammer.

Looks like a 2015 tank to me. I'm happy it's balanced, but there's no reason to play it while the other options are still busted strong.

[Private_Miros 2,931]

Aim time and accuracy look quite good, certainly when compared to TLC and Pershing. Are the bloom values that bad then that you call it bad gun handling?

 

And yeah, as a rant on the side, WG is putting an effort in making new tanks (new prems, new lines such as Russian double barrels, Polish meds) balanced. And how does the player base - the same base that cries murder and shame regarding powercreep and OP prems - react? They say: "Well this is mediocre, we don't want it. Please introduce something OP so we can give you all our money."

[Deus__Ex__Machina 983]

i think its a solid tank for 35$ tbh 

its very similar to the TL-P1 with the TL having better rof and dispersion and mobility , while the T42 gets better accuracy/aimtime and VR and 268 APCR instead of the TL's 280 HEAT.

both tanks have similar armor overall and can be decent hulldown ridge line warriors in their own tier.

also the T42 had some slight buffs the other day  

 • Dispersion at 100 m: from 0.35 to 0.32

• Dispersion after shot: from 4 to 3  

• Vision: from 380 to 400

sure the tanks not unique or special but overall its solid and for 35$ its a good deal for anyone who likes american ridge line MT's 

[Rexxie 10,757]

Okay, if it was buffed that helps a little. Tanks.gg still has it listed as 0.36 dispersion/380 VR.

34 minutes ago, Private_Miros said:

Are the bloom values that bad then that you call it bad gun handling?

0.2 track bloom is bad gun handling no matter how you slice it, but if it has 0.32 dispersion that helps the issue a lot.

If WG wants to stop the crying, they need to just stop selling game ruining tanks alongside their new offers. Their "we wont nerf them" attitude towards it all is horrible practice, too. I appreciate all the work they're putting into this tie-in to help sell an otherwise "normal" tank, though.

[lavawing 457]

I accidentally bought it 
Edit: Renegade sidegrade that's smol/ 2020 pershing.

DPM feelsbad

you gain: 

• raw accuracy (worse bloom)
• smol
• camo
• speed: 45 vs 40 on flat ground
• 268 APCR with even higher shell veloce
• no tumah

you lose

• alpha goes from outtrading heavies to outtrading meds
• DPM (~400)
• bloom
• bullshit autobounce angles
• turret loses strength on flat ground

 

 

 

[arthurwellsley 129]

 

[lavawing 457]

10 hours ago, arthurwellsley said:

 

AP is absolutely pointless here, as it is on basically every American medium from tier 6 to tier 9. Even on a frugal set up you should always have APCR preloaded to snipe wheelchairs/lights. A bit painful to watch tbh. It's not like there was any real point to pretending to run a poverty build when he has three pieces of bounty equipment on the thing. Tank is built for APCR spam.

15 hours ago, Rexxie said:

0.2 track bloom is bad gun handling no matter how you slice it, but if it has 0.32 dispersion that helps the issue a lot.

.2 is fine as the tank is slow and slow to accelerate. it feels comparable to .15 on a faster platform.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,010]

3 hours ago, lavawing said:

Tank is built for APCR spam.

Every single new tank.

[GTD 12]

5 hours ago, MagicalFlyingFox said:

Every single new tank.

This one more than the others.

AP shell velocity here is worse than on any other T8 med except of pref-mm Chinese derps. Mobility-wise it seems outclassed too. Looking at the YT videos it seems that only turret should work, but once you get penned by ACPR into the turret anyway, I feel like it's the worst new tank. 

I do have a tingle to get all meds in the game, but might skip this one (as I did with the Bulldozer and STG which don't suit me). Unless I decide it's ok to have ACPR-only tank. 

Edit - OK, you also do get the alpha, but I don't think it makes it better than the other low-pen high-armoured turret tank - T-54 1st Prototype. 

[arthurwellsley 129]

On 9/19/2020 at 11:21 AM, MagicalFlyingFox said:

Every single new tank.

Except that is an exaggeration. The TL-1 LPC has a penetration on standard shells of 208 and that is fairly new. The R48 RaumPanzer which GTD refers to is also fairly new and that has a penetration of 205.

 

The RaumPanzer has the standardish shell damage of 240 while the T42 and the TL-1 LPC both have 280.

 

So the real comparison is the T42 versus the TL-1 LPC.

 

The former has better gun handling and worse ROF and pene. The later has better pene, worse gun handling, better ROF and slightly better terrain resistances and power to weight. The T42 turret is better armoured at the front by a large margin. But the two are very close in the various numbers on a table.

 

Overall I would suggest that the R48 RaumPanzer, TL-1 LPC and the T42 are all pretty well balanced.

All three look slightly better on paper than the M26 Pershing tech tree version.

I bought the TL-1 LPC as I happened to need a BIA crew (used it in the re-purchased tier IX). I do worse in the TL1-LPC than in my M26 Pershing or my T25 Pilot 1. This is clearly an oddity of my gameplay.

[lavawing 457]

23 hours ago, GTD said:

Edit - OK, you also do get the alpha, but I don't think it makes it better than the other low-pen high-armoured turret tank - T-54 1st Prototype. 

The T42 is a high pen high armored turret tank 

Unlike the CS-52, which from the paper stats seems much better, this is actually a very cohesive package where all the stats are min-maxed for a single purpose - hulldown poking. Rather like the CS-52, it also doubles as a decently effective chai sniper. What makes it relatively balanced - which isn't pen - unless you believe that 198 AP on the Chrysler makes it fine - is the low DPM - and that's what really hard caps the carry capacity of the thing.

The 280 alpha/220-ish turret/268 pen combo is brutal. You to win frontal engagements against all tier 8 mediums effortlessly, and you the high pen makes you better at farming same tier heavies than most actual heavies in the tier.

Sitting at around 2.2-2.3k combined after 50 ish games - fairly good for a permateal baddie like me, and weirdly enough higher than my LIS stats.

[lavawing 457]

47 minutes ago, arthurwellsley said:

Except that is an exaggeration. The TL-1 LPC has a penetration on standard shells of 208 and that is fairly new. The R48 RaumPanzer which GTD refers to is also fairly new and that has a penetration of 205.

 

The RaumPanzer has the standardish shell damage of 240 while the T42 and the TL-1 LPC both have 280.

 

So the real comparison is the T42 versus the TL-1 LPC.

 

The former has better gun handling and worse ROF and pene. The later has better pene, worse gun handling, better ROF and slightly better terrain resistances and power to weight. The T42 turret is better armoured at the front by a large margin. But the two are very close in the various numbers on a table.

 

Overall I would suggest that the R48 RaumPanzer, TL-1 LPC and the T42 are all pretty well balanced.

All three look slightly better on paper than the M26 Pershing tech tree version.

I bought the TL-1 LPC as I happened to need a BIA crew (used it in the re-purchased tier IX). I do worse in the TL1-LPC than in my M26 Pershing or my T25 Pilot 1. This is clearly an oddity of my gameplay.

That's hardly an exaggeration.

To use your examples, the TL-1 has 280 pen on its HEAT rounds + 1,219 shell velocity to slam dunk heavy armour at redline ranges. Raumpanzer fights heavies all day and 208 is not enough. Both the Renegade and CS-52 have railgun APCR modelled after real life APDS, and one can easily achieve a 200-400 increase in DPG by firing full gold and by electing to not gimp yourself by adhering to some fairytale code of ethics in a Belorussian tank game.

Making a tank that's mediocre with AP and marginally overpowered with goldspam is not 'pretty well balanced'. It's an example of bad balancing coupled with a thinly veiled intention to make everything more expensive to run.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,010]

The latest tanks to have a gold shell that doesn't drastically change what it can do is the ISU-152K and further back the two lootbox tanks. And maybe the Senlac since it really doesnt matter if you use AP or APCR in that thing.  Oh, and the renegade.

 

The bourrasque, TL-1, LIS, This thing and the Rampanzer though completely transform by pressing the 2 key.

 

The ratio with this criteria favours the former, but that's because of the existence of the tanks that were already OP without gold shells in the first place.

Either way, slap on some 2 key and only 2 recent premium tanks are not insanely strong and maybe 4 aren't retardedly strong.

 

[_Juris 216]

Finally got around to playing mine a bit, and wrote up a long review on the official forums:

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/634586-juris-reviews-the-t42/

TL;DR is that there are too many downsides and not enough equipment slots to fix them.  You either end up with a medium tank that's too slow and sluggish to get into position, or a medium tank that has to choose between rate of fire (with poor penetration) or reasonable gun handling (with poor penetration).  Add in the dumbness where Situational Awareness is on the commander (so basically you won't get to use it unless you have a dedicated commander) which means you need to at least have BIA+Recon+Food+Vents to hit 445 view range, and you get a premium tank that fails at being a premium tank.  The TL-1 LPC is just better in basically every category, and there's no reason to buy this while that one exists (and actually goes on sale, which I think it has a couple times).

[Kymrel 185]

The slow shell velocity was an instant turnoff for me. Better than the Korean Patton, but that's not saying much.

[lavawing 457]

On 9/22/2020 at 11:18 PM, _Juris said:

you get a premium tank that fails at being a premium tank. 

agreed. it manages to be somehow even less functional than the Chrysler with standard rounds, and you need food to max VR unless you run optics (in which case your gun is not good enough)

Quote

The TL-1 LPC is just better in basically every category, and there's no reason to buy this while that one exists (and actually goes on sale, which I think it has a couple times).

this thing is better at poking, hulldown, and much better at sniping. the TL-1 will be better at doing medium things. but a lot of the time the T42 doesn't actually need to do medium things since it can just spit 268 pen rounds at mid range while being a pain to bleed due to the troll turret and short exposure times.

reading your review, it seems a bit weird to compare it to the T-44-100, a generalist flanker, to this thing, which is a hulldown-poking specialist. they have literally nothing in common other than the standard pen and both being tier 8 prem meds.

Quote

- if you don't run the turbocharger, it's difficult to play the T42 like an actual medium tank, and it lacks the hull armor of the Super Pershing (and preferential MM) to pretend to be a heavy. 

there do exist quite a few tier 8 meds that have similar mobility/agility, e.g. the Indien Panzer, the Cents, the Panther II, that despite sucking as actual mediums manage to perform decently. tbh I think it was a lost cause trying to salvage the T42 as a medium-y med and that's why the tank didn't perform for you.

first, I'd drop turbo because that doesn't work for the playstyle at all, then go with vents, stab and rammer plus food to max out both the VR and the DPM.

PS running full APCR will net you at least 2 extra shots of DPG as you all but guarantee a hit and a pen on your first shot, and the massive pen allows you to farm heavies and other heavily armoured targets. 

from the games I've played, I think it's intended to be played like a Renegade. next to the front line and never present a solid target. good farmer and hard to bleed. with a full tryhard setup, it might even be in the top 5 of tier 8 meds

1. Bourrasque
2. T-44-100 
3. CS-52
4. Progetto
5. T42?

also it's pretty good at winning games due to being able to sub as a heavy, and that APCR, VR, armour is powerful in breaking late game stalemates.

[_Juris 216]

10 hours ago, lavawing said:

this thing is better at poking, hulldown, and much better at sniping. the TL-1 will be better at doing medium things. but a lot of the time the T42 doesn't actually need to do medium things since it can just spit 268 pen rounds at mid range while being a pain to bleed due to the troll turret and short exposure times.

reading your review, it seems a bit weird to compare it to the T-44-100, a generalist flanker, to this thing, which is a hulldown-poking specialist. they have literally nothing in common other than the standard pen and both being tier 8 prem meds.

I think the T42 clearly not better at poking, since it has considerably worse bloom values than the TL-1 LPC, the hulldown is at best a wash (since it gets one more degree of gun depression, but its mantlet is way smaller), and it's a little better at sniping because of the accuracy (but you will be forced to use APCR to do it effectively, while the TL-1 LPC can use its AP rounds, and at least in some situations has a superior premium round as well).  

I compared it to the T-44-100 because it is a premium tank that has a poor enough AP round that flanking shots will be necessary in order to make reasonable use of standard rounds (and, thus, reliably make credits with it), particularly on NA where you will not get many games as an actual top-tier tank.  The point is that the T-44-100 has the appropriate other characteristics to make this combination work in spite of the poor AP round, whereas the T42 does not.

10 hours ago, lavawing said:

there do exist quite a few tier 8 meds that have similar mobility/agility, e.g. the Indien Panzer, the Cents, the Panther II, that despite sucking as actual mediums manage to perform decently. tbh I think it was a lost cause trying to salvage the T42 as a medium-y med and that's why the tank didn't perform for you.

first, I'd drop turbo because that doesn't work for the playstyle at all, then go with vents, stab and rammer plus food to max out both the VR and the DPM.

PS running full APCR will net you at least 2 extra shots of DPG as you all but guarantee a hit and a pen on your first shot, and the massive pen allows you to farm heavies and other heavily armoured targets. 

from the games I've played, I think it's intended to be played like a Renegade. next to the front line and never present a solid target. good farmer and hard to bleed. with a full tryhard setup, it might even be in the top 5 of tier 8 meds

1. Bourrasque
2. T-44-100 
3. CS-52
4. Progetto
5. T42?

also it's pretty good at winning games due to being able to sub as a heavy, and that APCR, VR, armour is powerful in breaking late game stalemates.

I didn't say that the tank didn't perform for me, or that it's a lost cause.  The issue is that it makes you choose between being a credit earner or having maximum combat potential, with a wide divergence between the two.  With turbocharger, VStab, and vents, and while deliberately not spamming APCR for purposes of the review (since I assume most normal players will not want to do this), I am sitting just under 2k DPG, and around 2.7k combined.  I agree that switching to full APCR is worth at least another shot, and maybe two, but at that point, why are you playing a premium tank?  You're not going to be making much money, and it doesn't even exactly match the skillset of the rest of the US medium line.  Which was exactly my point - you can absolutely make it be combat-effective, just not while really being a credit-maker, so if you aren't making credits and you're not progressing down a tech tree, why bother paying real money for the privilege?  The Super Pershing would almost certainly make you more money while being just as combat-effective, as would the TL-1 LPC.

As far as where i'd rank it, i'd say it's lower-middle if you don't use the full tryhard setup - it's probably better than bottom-tier stuff like the Panther 8,8, 59-Patton, and the like (although those might still be better credit earners in some situations, especially the 59-Patton), but there's no way it's much higher up than that.  It's not fast enough to be a genuine flanker like the T-44-100 or the Lansen C, doesn't have the autoloader/reloader to leverage like the Bourrasque, Skoda T27, Lorraine, or Progetto, and doesn't have really big alpha like the CS-52, STG, or M4A1 Revalorise to make people not want to poke.  That leaves it in the squishy middle with lots of NATO hull-down ridge-fighters, and while it has some good characteristics there, almost all the others have more effective AP rounds (both in penetration and shell velocity), and so they'll be better as premium tanks.

https://tanks.gg/compare/t42?t=59-patton~amx-cdc~centurion-51~fv4202-p~m48-rpz~pz-58~sta-2~strv-81~tl-1-lpc

As the comparison table shows, it loses out badly on AP pen and shell speed to all of them, is roughly tied for the bottom in gun handling, and has atrocious mobility.  It is unarguably the worst tank on the list?  No, it's not, but I don't think you can make an unequivocal case for it being the best of even that list, and that list includes none of the "best" premium tier 8 medium tanks.  Your Renegade comparison is revealing - it even loses out in DPM, penetration, and power-to-weight to a heavy tank at the same tier.  Can you imagine a Renegade losing a 1v1 to a T42, under any circumstances?

[Rexxie 10,757]

Maybe the big disconnect here is that a lot of players here are so horrifically rich that the idea of not tryharding is a bit foreign; having a bad AP round is kind of moot when you're sitting on 30m credits. Cant blame them, but the tank we're playing is a bit different from what they are.

I think you're both right, even if lava is probably overselling it a little.

[_Juris 216]

3 hours ago, Rexxie said:

Maybe the big disconnect here is that a lot of players here are so horrifically rich that the idea of not tryharding is a bit foreign; having a bad AP round is kind of moot when you're sitting on 30m credits. Cant blame them, but the tank we're playing is a bit different from what they are.

I think you're both right, even if lava is probably overselling it a little.

I agree, and I don't even think it's a disconnect, really - it's a perfectly adequate tank from a pure combat perspective if you don't factor in credits, and slinging 268 APCR at tier 8 is fun, it's just that it seems difficult to justify paying actual money for the privilege, when you could just play the M26 Pershing or the Caernarvon instead.

[lavawing 457]

7 hours ago, _Juris said:

I agree, and I don't even think it's a disconnect, really - it's a perfectly adequate tank from a pure combat perspective if you don't factor in credits, and slinging 268 APCR at tier 8 is fun, it's just that it seems difficult to justify paying actual money for the privilege, when you could just play the M26 Pershing or the Caernarvon instead.

Thanks to lootboxes I still have like 200 days of prem left . Besides with how generous WOT is with personal reserves these days you can break even with full APCR + food set ups, at least on higher alpha prems.

Personally, I hate playing tier 10s, and tier 9s are kind of not as good as they used to be these days what with the tier 10 spam and the general power creep. Tryharding at tier 8 is pretty relaxing for a change, and, again, you can actually break even by using personal reserves.

I buy quirky prems because I'm bored with the tech tree stuff, and also because of the thing that's been going on recently where prems gain more from tryharding than their tech tree equivalents, typically in the form of the prems having more pen and/or shell velocity on their gold rounds (e.g. Hwk30 vs 12, Rengade vs T32, CS52 vs 53, T42/TL1 vs Persh)

@Rexxie it's not exactly a disconnect, I just think tanks should be rated for their pure combat capabilities. Crew training and credit-making are important for a premium tank, but not more important than how the tank performs if you try to squeeze every last bit of performance from it.

Rating tanks mainly as credit earners yield weird, possibly misleading results which don't always reflect their overall place in the game balance. E.g. the Chrysler would be balanced but annoying. The CS-52 is strong-ish but nothing more than that. If you go on the official forums you can see a lot of that: apparently, the Chrysler is ok because you need gold for it to be competitive.

 

[_Juris 216]

7 hours ago, lavawing said:

@Rexxie it's not exactly a disconnect, I just think tanks should be rated for their pure combat capabilities. Crew training and credit-making are important for a premium tank, but not more important than how the tank performs if you try to squeeze every last bit of performance from it.

Rating tanks mainly as credit earners yield weird, possibly misleading results which don't always reflect their overall place in the game balance. E.g. the Chrysler would be balanced but annoying. The CS-52 is strong-ish but nothing more than that. If you go on the official forums you can see a lot of that: apparently, the Chrysler is ok because you need gold for it to be competitive.

I'm not rating it mainly as a credit earner, but at least for the majority of the tanks-playing population, it would seem odd not to at least mention its ability to do that, especially given that it can't even be bought for gold, but has to be purchased with actual currency.  I agree it's not the only useful metric of a tank, but it is one useful metric - I like to think of all tanks as a sort of product of their fun gameplay potential and their credit making (or losing) profile.  

I don't understand what you're trying to say in your last paragraph - why would credit earning lead me to rate the Chrysler K as "balanced but annoying?"   Part of what i'm saying here is that the T42 has exactly the same problem as the Chrysler K, at least in that sense - its combat effectiveness is almost entirely predicated on firing nothing but premium rounds.  Especially for a premium tank, the requirement to fire nothing but premium rounds is a significant downside unless you quite literally don't care about the credit economy at all.  I know here there are probably a lot more of us in that position than on the official forums, but i'm skeptical that it's the majority position even on WoTLabs, and I wrote my article with the official forums population in mind.

I also feel like you're not really compares apple to apples, here - if you want to analyze the performance of the T42 in full tryhard setup (always running food and full premium ammo loadout), you can't compare it to other tanks in non-tryhard setups.  If that's our assumption, I don't think my opinion of where it lies in terms of pure combat effectives changes much from my longer post yesterday comparing it to other ridgeline fighters - it's a pretty decent one, but i'm not even sure it's the best of those, and it still loses out to any of the other tanks I listed as being better than it, if you allow all those tanks to be in full tryhard setup, too.  

[lavawing 457]

21 hours ago, _Juris said:

I'm not rating it mainly as a credit earner, but at least for the majority of the tanks-playing population, it would seem odd not to at least mention its ability to do that, especially given that it can't even be bought for gold, but has to be purchased with actual currency.  I agree it's not the only useful metric of a tank, but it is one useful metric - I like to think of all tanks as a sort of product of their fun gameplay potential and their credit making (or losing) profile.  

I don't understand what you're trying to say in your last paragraph - why would credit earning lead me to rate the Chrysler K as "balanced but annoying?"   Part of what i'm saying here is that the T42 has exactly the same problem as the Chrysler K, at least in that sense - its combat effectiveness is almost entirely predicated on firing nothing but premium rounds.  Especially for a premium tank, the requirement to fire nothing but premium rounds is a significant downside unless you quite literally don't care about the credit economy at all.  I know here there are probably a lot more of us in that position than on the official forums, but i'm skeptical that it's the majority position even on WoTLabs, and I wrote my article with the official forums population in mind.

I also feel like you're not really compares apple to apples, here - if you want to analyze the performance of the T42 in full tryhard setup (always running food and full premium ammo loadout), you can't compare it to other tanks in non-tryhard setups.  If that's our assumption, I don't think my opinion of where it lies in terms of pure combat effectives changes much from my longer post yesterday comparing it to other ridgeline fighters - it's a pretty decent one, but i'm not even sure it's the best of those, and it still loses out to any of the other tanks I listed as being better than it, if you allow all those tanks to be in full tryhard setup, too.  

not sure if we actually disagree on anything

• tank is quite strong with a full tryhard set-up and quite bad if you avoid APCR spam
• I rate tanks assuming you tryhard and you rate (prem) tanks assuming a semi-poverty set up to maximise credit making
• I rate everything on the basis you spam APCR (if available), and, in the T42's case, 268 pen makes it better than other tier 8 meds that occupy a similar role (most of which have to make do with 250-ish pen - not enough to cheese same tier heavies in frontal engagements)
• being expensive to run doesn't make tanks bad

 

[_Juris 216]

4 hours ago, lavawing said:

not sure if we actually disagree on anything

• tank is quite strong with a full tryhard set-up and quite bad if you avoid APCR spam
• I rate tanks assuming you tryhard and you rate (prem) tanks assuming a semi-poverty set up to maximise credit making
• I rate everything on the basis you spam APCR (if available), and, in the T42's case, 268 pen makes it better than other tier 8 meds that occupy a similar role (most of which have to make do with 250-ish pen - not enough to cheese same tier heavies in frontal engagements)
• being expensive to run doesn't make tanks bad

 

Yeah, probably not much.  I'm not sure i'd call it "quite strong," i'd say it's in the upper tier of the ridgeline mediums in tryhard mode, but no better than slightly above middle overall of tier 8 premium mediums.  And i'm not really playing it in semi-poverty mode, but definitely reserving APCR for when it's necessary (which, as you point out, is quite often).  The turret is trolly but once you're all playing in tryhard mode, it's going to get penned at least half the time even if you're pointing your turret directly at your adversary, and it's harder to take snapshots because of the relatively worse gun handling.  

Looking at the comparison table above, I think i'd probably put the T42 as the third-best, behind the STA-2 and the TL-1 LPC.