I personally bought one and it will NEVER be in a battle (my little 'stand' against the BS the 59 (purely my opinion, you think a tank made 20 years after the others is fair, so be it) is to own but never use one).
The 59 is subpar tothe 54, there is absolutely no way to deny this. Since this *is* the case, the devs did a somewhat decent job of balancing a tank built 10 years later (pershing is ~45, Panther II is paper, T44 is ~44) the 59 *is* the T54A which was made in 1955.
What is funny is the 59 is supposed to be better than the 54 since it is a 54A, but the devs did not do that.
I'm trying to decide why my win ratio has been so bad in the last few months. Did the french tanks bring out the OLD 'good" players who where waiting on something new to play? Does that Auto loader make that much difference (dont think so, as i seldom die to a french tank).. or WOT has just peaked.. the old "good" players have just left and its 75% dumbA$$ players now?
French autoloaders are able to lay down a crapton of firepower in a short period of time. If they are given time to reload and do it another time, then that is where they become amazing. If they can reload and do it further times, then it just compounds the situation. My AMX 50/100 is able to kill any other tier 8 tank while only eating 1-2 shots from them. Rarely do I get to do my max damage to the enemy as I try *very* hard to track them on the first shot and then unload and hide.
Old good players have maxed out their tanks. In public games I only play the tanks I am actively grinding and some of my favorites. I RARELY play my tier 10s because the tier 10 games are painful in pub. I *never* play my tier 8 arty in pubs since 7.0 made such a smaller arty population that if I am in a game with tier 8 arty, it is normally 4 per side (which has also pissed off a LOT of tier 8 arty drivers).
I vote for the last one as i never see tanks grouped.. just spread across the map so they cant support each other. The slow maps (camponova as its called) no loger seems to be campe fests.. people charge and die to get it over with. both the new maps resemble the camping maps so are slow too.. hence alot of quick blow out matchs on them ...
I see no difference in pub mentality. I get good teams that understand how to respond, I get teams that completely ignore a flank, and I get teams that think defending is the way to go and just get artied/invisitanked to death.
I saw the most retarded thing I have *ever* seen in a public game, the two tier 10 tanks took the abbey and camped there waiting for a team to die and praying there were enough to light up the capping force to rain down shots. When asked why they did that, they said "meh it is pub". Sometimes you just play stupidly for a change of pace... hell I took the hill in my JTiger last week, and our team was lucky to have me do it when we held off the enemy JTiger (yes we both decided to go hill!?) and a crapton of frenchies.