Short Italian HT preview

Wanted to share my experience so far with the new HTs, from the little testing I've been able to do with the CT's general bad gameplay. I'd also like to hear what other people who played with them a bit think of them so far.

• haven't been able to play the tier 7, it's a shame, but it's just a tier 7. Looking at the stats of the guns though, looks like it has the TVP syndrome where it'll be better played stock.

• tier 8 looks like a great tank and a painless grind. Can mount everything without tracks, stock gun is fine, top gun handles well, dpm is 'ok' but the alpha feels good. Been able to do a first game at 4k dmg with a free2play setup without tryharding. Feels like a medium, a faster less-armored Bisonte with better gun handling basically. I know a lot of people think the Bisonte is meh, I really like it personnaly, I think this tank will have a similar playstyle, sort of.

• tier 9 is weird. It looks great, armor does not work against gold ammo, choice of two guns with relatively bad gun handling, one has 4 shells and good pen/velocity but low alpha, the other has higher alpha (thus dpm) but 3 shells and less pen. Long grind that feels standard for a tier 9 these days. Haven't played much with it so other people will have more to say about it. Also for some reason the "second top gun" (low alpha one) has worse accuracy and aim time with the top turret, so it sounds like an xp-trap like on other tier 9 with "optional" expensive guns (Skoda, IS-3-II).

• tier 10 is a lot of fun yet doesn't feel OP. Mobility is good but not insane (Chieftain-like), gun is powerful but dpm sucks (more than once I found myself unable to have a full clip during the entire game because the reload is so long you just have to take the dpm hit in order to participate), standard ammo has high pen and insane velocity but gold is extremely slow, armor works fine but a tiny weakspot on the gun is hard to hide and HE does hurt because only 3 crews.

• the tier 10 has a garbage crew layout that makes it incompatible with the rest of the line (only 3 crew, commander and gunner are both loaders) meaning if you have the Bisonte you'll have to carry useless crew skills on 2 of your crew members if you keep the same crew to tier 10. And because of how many roles the commander has, you pretty much need a "special" commander for it. So maybe save Chuck Norris or your Twitch Prime commanders for this tank.

Overall, great line, looks like they've done a good balancing job. Nothing looks really OP, the tier 9 is the most at risk of being too good in the hands of good players imo, the tier 10 lacks the dpm and turret armor to reliably compete with the Kranvagn but the alpha and shell velocity make it really fun for random battles. It does feel a bit like the GSOR: if it clips you, you will suffer, but a single miss can mean losing a 1v1.

Guns handle well enough that you don't need both an IRM and vstab, which leaves room for optics, or turbo if you're willing to use food (haven't felt a huge difference with turbo at tier 10 personnaly, and because of the autoreloader and awful dpm even with bond equipment and food it still feels really bad, so I'd say not worth it).