Using them will expose you for extended periods of time which you don’t want, you should take one or two rounds of HE, for dealing with light vehicles
Also only take enough ammo to fill up the autoloader don’t take any more than that bc it will be scattered everywhere inside the tank
Trust me the Leo’s have pretty good armor the issue is that pretty much everyone knows it’s weak spots.
And you should go by the “don’t get hit rule” in every tank.
It is also alot better for your sanity to not expect your tank to just bounce shots
ATGM is funny but not worth the risk. Despite what others say, the Leo’s gun depression, traverse/elevation and acceleration as well as reverse make it superior to the T80
The Abrams isn’t too different from Leo 2s, the faster reload, bigger 1st stage ammo stowage and getting shot in the turret ring are the standout differences
The T-80U is the biggest change, stronger armour (don’t rely on it) and it being the T-80UE-1 patches it’s biggest drawback from the standard T-80U: much faster horizontal turret drives (40 vs 24deg/sec). Explodes when touched wrong and, while better than T-72s it’s reverse will not get you out of trouble and the lack of neutral steering can be kind of annoying in all the city maps. It’s still a solid tank and probably one of the better picks for grinding USSR.
If Gaijin feels like expanding the plot, I don’t see why not. A pack similar for the Chally 2 OES and Type 90 are highly likely I’d guess.
Out of the 3, I’m pretty confident the HC is the best premium. The Armor is identical to the M1A2, while the others struggle to take hits. If you sit hull-down and utilize large sight lines, the Abrams shreds. It also safely carries about 40 rounds in the bustle compared to the Leopard’s 15 shells, while also getting MPAT (M830A1).
I’d say what I say here is the objectively correct opinion:
1: Abrams
2: Leo
3: T-80
The Abrams is by far the best as it has the best mobility, reload, shells, tied with Leo for gun handling, as well as pretty decent armor. The turret is quite strong and the UFP will bounce anything shot at it. The only con is that basically every penetrating shot takes out your horizontal, but negligible overall as all 3 don’t really have great armor or survivability anyway. It is the 2nd best 12.0 sitting at 11.7 because US players are garbage.
Leo has slightly worse mobility, worse shell selection, reload, armor, same horizontal problem, but still an overall decent tank. The turret is weak to rounds like DM53 and M829A2, but it’s breach armor is pretty cracked at like ~500mm. Hull is from the standard 2A4 but the upper upper front plate (yes I wrote that right) has the composite add-on from the 2A7 so it will bounce rounds sometimes. Gets Gen 3 thermals vs the Abrams’ Gen 1.
The T-80 is the worst of the bunch, slightly worse forwards mobility than Abrams but significantly worse reverse gear, an atrocious elevation, the worst APFSDS round but decent selection of ammo. It also has the classic lack of depression, which griefs you a ton. The armor is okay, it gets UFP’d by most top tier rounds within 500m and the turret is eh, also poor survivability because of packed crew and giant ammorack, lacks external fuel tanks like the T-72/T-90 so you will die to fuel explosions if not crew/ammo.