WARNING: Texts walls ahead. Proceed with caution
After the crummy Sherman (which isn't that bad, considering it has gun depression, but then you realize you rarely ever get to use that when the time comes to it), I have come across what I can arguably say is one of the best T2, if not best Road to Berlin Tank in this event. If you gave up trying to get to the Pershing, or was just not interested in grinding anything but the OG russian tanks, you might want to give the American Tanks a little more effort, as for the duration of the event that I played this hidden gem, I found that the Jumbo has massive carry potential, literally:
- Despite it being the Jumbo, and likewise slower than the Sherman, it's still pretty mobile, able to outpace the heavy Tanks (Not including the Churchill on crack ability) easily.
- The front armor on this thing. Were you disappointed by the IS's to the illusion that your armor was only somewhat trollish? Do you wish you had something that was unexpectedly more trolly to the AI? Good news, the Jumbo played properly is nearly immune to 50% of the enemy shells from the front and what I expect the turret (more on this in a second).
You have to believe me on this (because unlike frontline, WOT doesn't consider this a .wotreplay- worthy event. (pls apply your replay saving more consistently WG!)), but on two occasions, me in my dinky little Jumbo was able to compete and even OUPERFORM the heavies, in some cases all the team's heavies COMBINED (I made a reddit post about this two days ago) in regards to blocked damage scores, among other categories in the Post Battle Results. The Lower Tier Panzer IV's (not the "HE Spamzer IV's" in higher tier games) ?pingpingpingping
The Non-Elite Panthers and sometimes Elite Panthers? pingpingtrackpingping
Tiger I's and sometimes even a Tiger II shell? Believe it or not, I was able to block one shell from each tank, the former while face hugging the heavy, though I think both these events were just extreme cases of good RNG on my part.
The only thing I didn't test was the ability to block TD shells, but to be honest, I wasn't stupid enough to even think about trying this. I was already pushing my luck with the Panthers and those Tigers, I wasn't going to get caught dead YOLO rushing the JagPanthers or JTigers testing this train of thought. But the bottom line is: This thing laughs in the face of danger, sometimes to absolutely ludicrous levels. The basic principle is that as long as your front is towards the enemy, they'll have to either use gold ammo (which I suspect that some of the higher level and Elite Enemies use to damage you with) or have a giant caliber gun to have a chance to damage your hull. - But what about those ridiculous events you mentioned? Right. For one, while this is highly inconsistent, and the Jumbo is definitely not 100% immune to arty focusing (sorry to break the news to you, arty haters), but given a T1-T2 or pure T2 team composition, the Wespes and the occasional Hummel will struggle to hit you (the thing is easy to juke arty in if you can see the tracer incoming) or damage you, though this will often damage tracks or viewports instead of HP. I suppose this isn't special, considering the IS-2 given good RNG can perform this equally well.
But holy crap the Jumbo's turret is ridiculous. I think. Second game in Jumbo ( I'm the only one with more than 3 lives at this point btw), and I find the fourth wave of enemies bearing down on me quickly from multiple angles. Lots of panthers, ugh. Naturally I think I'm totally screwed, but I make like a lunatic for some hull down cover farther from the Normandie city church panther mob attempting to gulp me up. I think I might have used more of this thing's Russian-like RNG, but one would expect that I would be naturally shredded. The front armor is immune to panthers, but not the rear or sides, The only thing facing any of them remotely "frontally" was the turret as I shot back in panic. A total of four to five panthers fired at me in my escape attempt, and in a T1 Sherman or T-34-85M, that would have been gg right there. But for whatever freakish reason, only ONE penned me. I wish I was joking. Not to be a tinfoil hatter, but this thing has such good RNG (which becomes even more apparent quickly) that I swear this thing gets purely Russian bias RNG over the normal American Tank RNG. - The gun is the Jumbo's biggest strength and greatest weakness, with its other weaknesses being not as fast as the Russian T2 and the airstrike (ugh, this thing). As WG intended them to be, the Jumbo trades good penetration values for British DPM. 100+ alpha on a 3 second reload? It's maybe a bit wanting, given the things this tank can see, but I suspect WG was a bit too generous with the upgrade from Sherman to Sherman Jumbo. Yes, the bloom isn't insanely small like the 85M's. Yes, it won't pen literally everything like the Russian Tanks can at T2. But that doesn't mean the Jumbo has the worst penetration or gun handling in the world. In fact, given the correct positioning and playstyle, these weaknesses are not really that big a deal, or even weaknesses.
For one, the DPM doesn't penalize bad shots in the slightest. This pew pew gun is meant to be relentless, honing in on weaker targets and raining fire down.
Due to the higher RNG than the Russian Medium, you can't exactly snipe like the 85M can. But damn, have I gotten very, very lucky. You could endlessly fire, and have the bloom go everywhere. But I've learned the aim time is quite fast on this thing (must have GLD installed by default?), and I've landed at least 75% of my shots, even at range.
The penetration isn't that bad either. In fact, it's ridiculously lucky. The SHerman Jumbo was intended to bully soft targets like the sides of TDs, arty, and the panzer IV's. But if you practice your aim, this opens up the door for a lot more targets you can farm damage off of, like:
-the Jpanther frontally (somehow)
-The Ferdinand's frontal weakspots (though it's super hard, you're better off flanking it and shooting its butt)
-Frontal Panthers become relatively easy to pen, if you aim for the LFP and the turret cheeks, though the gun mantlet is near impossible to pen and the UFP is semi-trollish. Having them distracted to show the sides, rear or turret sides is optimal.
-Tiger 1's hull is relatively easy to hit, if they aren't aggro-ed onto you and you are close enough. If you truly are close enough, any part of the Tiger I's chassis is theoretically and somewhat practically pennable.
-Tiger II is better left to be dealt with your higher pen teammates, but if the King Tiger's commander had a brain fart and locks onto a different tank, farm that Tiger's sides and rear anything for all it's worth - The abilities the Americans have are a mixed bag to be honest, as the former, an airstrike, is highly situational. Only use it on boss enemies, the waves where you are attacking them and not the opposite, and on Tigers. On one hand, it's actually pretty good on paper. It usually does 400 damage to the tanks hit by it, and despite the annoyingly long timer that precedes the drop and the area that is affected, there will be the RNG moments that hit random tanks just outside the radius… unreliably. The other hand is just as I mentioned: It's the longest of all the strikes (tied with the somewhat more workable TD strike at 5 seconds), and despite the fact that the Beast Slayers do have an equally long time between deployment and the actual strike, it as the SMALLEST impact zone of all of them. Good luck hitting anything that doesn't move slower than the speed of 5kph or nada. There are times where this thing can fart on a ton of tanks for 800-1200 damage, but that's those RNG moments where a TD and one or two panthers get stuck on each other while strafing you behind a barricade.
The Incendiary round however is far more useful, asides from the fact RNG hates me when it's loaded and you only get one round instead of two. While the initial 100 alpha doesn't help to hurt the enemy tanks as much as the flame rounds on the SU-100 and 85M do, when push comes to shove in regards to the attack timer, any additional damage you can inflict could mean the difference from getting the W at stage 5 and epic failing on the first stage and burning a X5 or X15 (which is a dumb mechanic if WG wants to know, considering you can actually buy these things, only for camping idiots to toss it out the window).
I have no idea if the Pershing continues this trend of going from suck to not-suck. Every time I try to ask the Pershing on my team they are deaf to the chat window, which is fair enough, given it's a high stakes event. Doesn't matter either, as I'm officially done grinding RTB, having received the IS-2S a battle or two after these events occurred. But I can't think of any tank in this roster that improves so dramatically over it's predecessor like the Jumbo does (unless the Churchill-> BP or SU-100 -> ISU-122 is any better, I doubt it), except many the Russian tanks. It's definitely not the best medium overall, I think that honor goes to the T-44 or IS-2V, but it is by far the best medium, or best tank overall among the four other T2 tanks you can choose from.
