Hi guys,
I know there are lots of questions regarding what tank to get from the trade in shop. Yesterday I traded in my Guard and 5550 gold for Somua. I played nearly 50 battles in it so far so I can share my short time experience and make your decision easier.
I am an average player with WN8 around 1700-1800 and 51-52% wr. Other heavies I have are IS3-A, Renegade, T-832. Basically not so bad HTs.
How would I rate Somua compared to the tanks mentioned above? I would easily say that (for the average player like me) T-832 is the best out of all 4 because of the amazing gun and great turret armor. You just can face current meta tanks like BZ or Iron Arnie without any problems playing hull down.
Rene is very good overall but because of the big cupola, it is much harder to play hull down. It has a great mobility though and we all know how good the gun on it is.
IS3-A used to be a very good tank. I said used to be because after releasing BZ it kinda became obsolete and I just stopped to play it. You deal 1200 and reload for ages when BZ hits you for 800 and reloads faster to finish you off.
Now let's get back to the Somua SM. The first 3-4 battles I really hated the tank. I used IA, stab and vents. The tank was slow and blind. 430 metres of VR with food and 4 perk crew with situational awareness and recon. Mobility was a big problem. You just can't be that slow in a "paper" tank. After that I decided to sacrifice vents for turbo and IA for optics. With such a setup I managed to get an ace tanker in my 6th battle with the tank. It is important to mention that it was a bond turbo. With that the tank became a completely different story. It was fast and gave me a much, much better experience. In the next battles I maxed my field modifications and now I use bond turbo, normal stabilizer and normal vents. I think it is the best setup because you get bonuses from the upgraded field mods on stab and vents. It still does not give me the max VR (443 m) but it's ok.
Overall, if you plan to use turbo (in mobility slot from field mods), I would give Somua 8+/10. It has amazing burst potential. You can take 1-2 hits and send many 8-tier tanks back to the garage. With turbo you will usually be fast enough to hide and reload. Just don't play it as an armoured HT brawler. It won't work. From the other side, do not hide and let your heavy tank teammates die or/and be farmed. Support them. Somua gives your team a big fear factor. Enemies know what happens when they push. No one likes to be banged for 1500 within 9 seconds.
Cheers.
