Okay, so then the rest is true? Cool. Then the Leclerc isn’t worse than the ariete.
Not to mention I use a 480mm pen round at top tier quite handedly.
While pen of a shell is definitely meaningful, it is less so than the rest of the stats discussed. Otherwise light vehicles would be useless in the game. Yet people get kills all the time with rounds that are 150-270mm pen.
Armor, speed, traverse freedom and reload are all more important than your dart.
You know 97% war thunder players have skill issues when they take 7.1 sec 577mm pen over 5 sec 630mm pen
The Leclerc is more of a light tank currently, but it’s still amazing. My favorite tank in game and also my most played tank. It’s easily in the top half of top tier MBTs.
Best gun handling at top tier, 2nd best reload (and before you say Abrams etc have 5 second reload too, most people don’t have ace crews and I kill Abrams often by out reloading them), and the best mobility at top tier.
Armor is the least important of the three pillars of tank design in War Thunder and anytime I see someone complain about a tank having good/bad armor as if that’s the only thing that matters I roll my eyes (not saying you do that, but a lot of people do).
I’m really surprised people didn’t pick the Chally 2 BN.
I will not speak to the rest of your assessment of Ariete AMV vs Leclerc since I do not have Arietes. I felt comfortable addressing the DM53 aspect since I have plenty of DM53 shooters and also own the Leclercs.
I enjoy my Leclercs even though they have some issues and I in no way think they are second worst. I feel they have a lot of average/good aspects and no real, clear stand out strength. However, the combination of these aspects make it a good tank, especially in high end players’ hands.
My opinion only (as an average at best player…I find top end players can make any tank work, so…)
The dart: it is average at best and struggles to kill in a single shot which paired with the Leclerc’s armor and 3-man crew can spell trouble. The round is obviously not as forgiving as the DM53 or US top round and a few others. That is no big deal to elite players, but for a potato like me it matters.
The optics: very good, but Challys, Merkavas, and others also have very good optics
Gun handling: very good (the closest to a standout area), but again a few other tanks have equal handling so not a definitive it is the best in this area to set it apart
Mobility: Very good. The ZTZ-99A, WZ, Abrams, and others are agile as well, so even if the Ledclerc is slightly more agile, it still does not stand out
Armor: It is okay-ish, most armor cannot stand up at top tier anyway, but I feel the 3-man crew paired with the armor hurts it a bit more than 4-man crewed tanks. It definitely does not survive shots like the BVM, Leopards, STRVs, or even on occasion the Merks
Reload: this became less special after recent buffs. Do not get me wrong the 5 sec autoloaded gun is good, but many people at least expert their crews and get their reloads very close to 5 seconds without having the risk of only 3 crew.
Fellow French players: this can be a huge strength and no matter the cause (lack of high tier premium, forum reputation of French tree, etc), many French line players are very good. I forget the streamer, I think Semicooperative, but he had a great point about passive and active advantages of tanks. He said that the Abrams and Leclercs have more active advantages so the tank really shows in the hands of good players, but can appear weaker in the hands of an average or worse player. As I said earlier, the elite players can make any tank work. Just for completeness, the streamer identified the survivability of things like the BVM as passive strengths that allow the average to below average player to survive things they usually would not in a more active advantage vehicle. I think this is quite true.
When you combine all the factors together, I find the Leclerc to be an average tank (in school grades I would say it is a B- maybe for an average player, but probably an A for an elite player like most tanks would be). I personally think tanks in game should be looked at from an average player perspective not the top or bottom folks.
As a parallel to how I rate the Leclerc, I personally love the Chally’s in concept, but to me they are closer to a C- or D when you aggregate the round (2E, BN) and the mobility (3TD, BN) with the huge breech weak point and other armor weakness.
Anyway, just the thoughts of a mediocre (at best, on a good night) player.
An addendum: I also think that the differences between most of these tanks matter far less and cause me far fewer deaths than CAS killing me from afar with little to no defense. Just had to throw that in there ;)
The Ariete used to have the best round in the game but now it has nothing.
Its purely the APS. Its kinda rare and incredibly valuable in the KH-38 meta at top tier at the moment.
If you removed that, it would get a lot more votes
Its one of the only tanks with both DM53 (best round in game) and 5 second reload. Most DM53 have 6 second reloads.
well yeah untill M829A2 fired from a L44 is better aswell
TBH every time I play black night the experience is kinda smooth, maybe its my expectation is a bit lower, so when my aps actually work for once it makes me happy.
And for most tank in this tier list except for the few having armor, its always good until u get hit. Like ariete is definitely better than leclerc except when u get hit, leclerc’s hull might eat a shell with less than 600 pen and ariete has nothing
Its definetly being carried by APS and some very good optics.
But there are so many things they could do to make the BN and other CR2s a lot more fun to use. Like increasing the ready rack from for 4 rounds to 20-28 rounds
It’s the catch 22 of War Thunder: mobility is meta and being shot isn’t meta; but the likelyhood of getting shot in a game is extremely high so armour and survivability is something you have to consider.
Sure, you can argue the Ariete AMV is a fantastic MBT until someone looks at you.
Well when they first implement the ready rack for cr2s, I though they are making them stand out among all other tanks that have 6s reload to compensate the mobility? Well currently pretty much everyone have 5s reload, but cr2 are limited by that 4 rounds on the side of the breach lol
can anything be done to improve the chinese mbts or is it just stuck like this? :/
Yeah, when we had the fastest reload, it was a reasonable mitigation… But now?
Its just an unfair nerf
Well currently maps are really small and most of the time u have to face enemies frontally first, and then u might have the opportunity of flanking on the side
They indirectly nerfed the tanks that they had balanced through reload rate (leclerc, chally, type 10) except now they don’t buff them to compensate for 5 seconds being the new standard, personally i think they should all receive an armour rework (Type 10 especially since it’s composite is really janky) and a buff in another department to keep them viable in the state of top tier
On paper it has better armor than most tanks in the game as it has a decent coverage of eras on the ufp, but even if u are a newbie u should have a general ideas of where to shoot soviet style tanks after a few top tier match. Its just a worst bvm on almost every single aspect except for mobility (bigger lfp, no protect on the side). Also 7.1 sec reload is just bad.
ah, thats unfortunate
I am grinding through the chinese tree currently and they do look cool even if they’re bad ;/
The sad thing is they balance tanks through stats, the worst situation one tank is in, the less people play them. Those who left are the ones have decent performance in them, especially the nation has less player base. Some nation has their mbt in 12.0 because the limit is there, some of them are there because they are just end of the line mbt.
