Leclerc has some good turret cheek armour especially against Russian MBT rounds.
This is because it’s around ~580mm worth of KE protection, which most rounds like 3BM60 / Chally top tier rounds can’t pen.
Most good players who have access to most nations switch around based on the new metas.
At the moment, Russia has a great top tier CAS lineup, along with France.
Italy always had good players (since most new players choose other countries, like the main 3 (USSR, Germany, and USA), so I can understand why it’s so high. That and because it’s more likely to pair up with high win-rate countries like France, Germany, and (now) USSR.
Israel is on a similar boat as Italy, but they have a better MBT too.
It’s also much better than the 2A8 (basically the current underperforming 2A7V but with Trophy) and the SEPv3 (basically just SEPv2 but with MAYBE better hull armor, and Trophy).