4Game

This is mainly a response to some people in the thread talking about how someone won a 1v7 in the T29. I wanted to reply to everyone, not just to one person in that thread, so I am creating a new post here.

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The T29 is probably overpowered. Its' extremely strong turret armor lets it both dominate at its own tier and punch above its weight when fighting tier 8s and 9s, and it simply doesn't have that many weaknesses.

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People like to say that the T29 is balanced because it has a weak hull. I think this is exaggerated. Sure, the T29's hull armor isn't great. But which tier 7 heavies even have great hull armor, anyways?

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The O-Ni's armor is decent, at least until it faces a higher tiered enemy or someone willing to spam gold, in which case it turns into cheese. The turret is unreliably, which makes it not very good at hull down play, and the angled shoulder plates reduce the effectiveness of sidescraping or angling. It also pays for the armor by being huge and slow.

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The Tiger P's hull armor can deflect autoaimed shots fired at the center of mass by same and lower tiered tanks firing silver rounds, I suppose? It is also riddled with weakspots (shoulders and lower front plate), doesn't work against higher tier tanks or most gold rounds, and the shoulder plates prevent sidescraping and angling (there are even shoulder plates on the back to prevent you from reverse sidescraping). The tank also has bad DPM, only 240 alpha instead of 280 like the regular Tiger, and is pretty slow.

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The King Tiger (C) has a pretty good UFP. But the turret isn't amazing, the LFP is weak no matter how much you angle, the UFP needs to be angled to bounce even same tier silver reliably, and higher tier tanks and gold rounds will butter the UFP.

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I think the Black Prince and M-II-Y also have pretty trolly hull armor, but they pay for it in various ways (the Black Prince is slow and its gun is extremely anemic, with abysmal alpha and penetration, and the M-II-Y has an unenviable combination of low alpha and low DPM).

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The T29's hull armor isn't that bad. It can bounce silver rounds from most tier 5s and some tier 6s. The track links on the UFP can get troll bounces, especially when hit at awkward angles. It is fairly decent at sidescraping (it will show a small fragment of UFP, but most tier 7s aren't going to have the gun handling to hit that). It is a very good reverse sidescraper (in a perfect reverse sidescrape position, it is basically invincible, other than the turret roof). Most other tier 7 heavies are pretty bad at reverse sidescraping and sidescraping, as they can just get penetrated in the turret when they try to shoot, but with the T29, you have to try and hit a tiny sliver of hull exposed for a split second instead.

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No, the T29's hull armor in the open isn't going to stand up to fire from same and higher tier tanks, or from gold rounds. But which tier 7 heavy has hull armor that will do that?

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And it's not just the turret armor that makes the T29 great. The gun handling is another factor. On paper, the gun handling is unexceptional for a tier 7 heavy. However, the T29 can mount vertical stabilizers. If I remember correctly, no other tier 7 heavy except for the M-II-Y can do this. This means that, in practice, the T29 has rather good gun handling, tier for tier.

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People say the T29 is slow, and this is true. But most tier 7 heavies are fairly slow. Among all tier 7 heavies, counting all the various IS-2 variants separately, there are 9 slower than the T29 and 11 faster, when considering speed on medium terrain (the most common terrain). And many of the faster ones are only faster by a few kph, which is not that significant. Like, the IS goes at 34 kph on medium terrain, compared to 33.27 kph for the T29. Is that actually going to make a difference? I honestly doubt it. Most tier 7 heavies are slow. The T29's mobility is pretty much in the middle of the road.

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The T29 additionally has above average penetration and gold penetration for its tier and class. 198 AP and 245 APCR are both fairly nice.

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The T29's alpha is good. 320 is not the highest alpha among tier 7 heavies, but 240 is probably the most common value, and the 390 alpha heavies suffer from bad gun handling and bad penetration (exacerbated by weak armor in the case of the IS variants, which prevents you from aiming fully in most situations). 320 alpha combined with good gun handling (Vstabs), good penetration, and strong turret armor that lets you aim your shots means that the T29's firepower is pretty good for its tier, despite the low-ish DPM.

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Essentially, the T29 doesn't really have a lot of weaknesses, relative to its peers. It is slow, but so are they. Considering all factors (bad DPM, but good Alpha, good gun handling, and good penetration), it has good firepower. Its hull armor is mediocre, but that is true for pretty much all of the tier 7 heavies, and its turret is extraordinary (I know the roof is overmatchable. It's not that much of a problem. The tier 7 heavies capable of overmatching it all have such bad gun handling that hitting it is very hard for them, using even part of your gun handling shrinks the overmatchable area drastically and it disappears when using the full 10 degrees, and having a small weak spot is better than having your entire turret be a weakspot, which is the case for most tier 7 heavies, at least for higher tier tanks and/or people firing gold).

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When it is facing same and lower tiered opponents, the T29 is extremely dominant. In hull down situations, which come up extremely commonly for heavies, it can pretty much shit on every other same and lower tiered tank with minimal fear of retaliation. Even when not hull down, you can sidescrape, reverse sidescrape, trade against people with less alpha, etc. Basically, it is the best tier 7 heavy for hull down play (because of the ridiculous turret and 10 degrees of gun depression), the best tier 7 heavy for sidescraping and reverse sidescraping (thanks to the turret), and fairly decent at fighting outside of hull down positions.

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When facing higher tiered opponents, the T29 is at a disadvantage, but still has more of a chance than most of its peers. You can play hull down and take opportunistic shots at enemy weak spots, most enemies will struggle to penetrate you, and even the ones with super high pen gold rounds won't have a trivial time penetrating you (they will penetrate most other tier 7 heavies trivially, on the other hand). Like, if you are driving an IS and you end up uptiered, what are you going to do? Between your complete lack of armor, bad gun handling, and bad penetration (you will struggle to penetrate the sides and weak spots of many higher tiered heavies, if you even manage to hit), you probably aren't going to go to the heavy lane. But even if you go to the medium lane, most tier 8 mediums will easily club the shit out of you. A CS-52 LIS spamming gold will turn your turret into cheese (same for most tier 7 heavies), and you won't be able to do anything to him. Tier 9 mediums will dominate you even harder. If a Concept 1b decides to go to the medium flank, you are totally screwed. At least the T29 won't be trivially penetrated, and 245 APCR can penetrate a lot of stuff if you aim carefully.

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I don't have time to look at every tier 7 heavy's win rate curves, but the T29 does improve the win rates of players of all skill levels substantially. It also has a fairly high global winrate (in the last 60 days, it is 4th highest in EU, behind the Skoda T 45, which was only played 5262 times and can be disregarded, the King Tiger (C) (Perhaps the UFP is good enough for dealing with low tiered players who are bad at aiming, have poor gun handling, and can't afford gold), and IS-2M (only played 70k times). It also has the second highest 3rd mark requirement on EU, right behind the Skoda T 45, which is barely played, showing that it is good for pumping out the damage in a skilled player's hands.

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I'm not making an immediate call to action or anything, but I'm just trying to refute some rather bad arguments I frequently see made about the T29 (slow and bad hull armor).