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Buona Sera Tankeccino's!
Once again I'm working my magical WoT Asia Community Contributor superpowers to bring you my review of the upcoming Tier VIII Premium Italian Heavy Tank, the Bisonte C45. Wargaming continues its trend of bringing exciting and innovative new ways to play through the Christmas Holiday Ops!
Autoreloading - Italian Heavy Tank Style
The autoreloader mechanic (as opposed to autoloader) debuted in World of Tanks in April 2018, with the Progetto M35 mod 46 and can be found throughout the Italian medium tank line, on the Soviet IS-3A and with elements presenting within the Soviet double-barrel line. This mechanic provides a vehicle with a flexibility unavailable to others as you have a choice as to whether to play conventionally with single shots, or pour out a high volume of fire in the short term at the expense of a longer reload. Unlike autoloaders, you will have another round ready in the tube should the need arise to use it without waiting for the entire clip to be reloaded. Having said that, if you empty your magazine then the time to reload the next shell is much longer and your damage-per-minute suffers accordingly. This means the autoreloading tanker needs to assess the situation carefully to ensure that they do not carelessly dump their clip and render themselves vulnerable to counter-attack or become inefficient with their damage output.
Firing your second shell while the first shell is reloading will typically reset the counter, and you will restart the loading process from your second shell with a longer loading time. Where the Bisonte C45 (and other upcoming Italian Heavy Tanks) deviate from other autoreloaders is that firing does not fully reset the reload timer. In fact, if you fire within the last two seconds of your next shell completing its reload there will be hardly any noticeable prolongation of your reload at all! This provides the Italian Heavy Tank with phenomenal tactical flexibility and the ability to keep spitting out damage when you need it most.
Firepower
The 105mm gun on the Bisonte C45 packs similar punch to the Swedish autoloading heavy tanks, with a base 360 alpha damage, 218mm standard penetration and 3 rounds per clip. This is superior to the 300 alpha damage on the French autoloading heavies, but is slightly lower on the penetration. 1877 base DPM is average compared to the other magazine-fed heavies, but bear in mind this could be bashed as low as 1358DPM if you are fighting from a depleted magazine. In terms of the standard rounds, the 218mm AP penetration is shy of the 232mm penetration you get from standard round of the Amercian T77 and French heavy autoloaders, however the premium HEAT rounds is where this tank shines against its peers with 270mm of penetration. This is only outmatched by the 299mm penetration from the HEAT rounds fired by the T77.
Standard shell velocity of 1,155m/s is faster than that of standard rounds on all other Tier VIII magazine-fed heavy tanks, with the exception of the near-lightspeed standard APCR of the IS-3A at 1,400m/s. The shell velocity tempers the variables involved in aiming, where you already have the second-ugliest gun dispersion values of the Tier VIII magazine-fed heavy tanks. With base dispersion is 0.40/100m, made proportionally worse by moving or turning, the Bisonte C45's gun handling is inferior to all Tier VIII magazine-fed heavy tanks bar the IS-3A. Vertical stabilisers are an essential addition to this tank.
Armour
Early information leaks suggested that the Bisonte C45 would a game-breaking Tier VIII T95/FV4201 Cheiftain, and looking at what appears to be impossibly thick spaced armour plating coupled with 10deg of gun depression, who could be blamed for jumping to that conclusion? When it's fighting from a hull-down position you'll still be needing AP/APCR from your tank destroyers to go through the turret cheeks reliably.
If you have to fight this tank hull-down, a better counter is to fire high-explosive rounds at the mantlet just below the barrel, where the 40mm armour of the drivers hatch is vulnerable to being damaged by splash.
There is some artistic license at play with the spaced armour as well, since in practise it's only 20mm thick unlike the near-invincible plate protecting the Super Pershing. While this is definitely going to upset HEAT rounds, there is still very high chance that shots to the hull from Tier VIII AP and Tier VII APCR will punch through the upper-frontal plate if it is not angled correctly.
Outside of a hull-down fighting position, the Bisonte C45 is a very vulnerable tank. The roof is made from 30mm plate, so will be overmatched by 90mm calibre guns. Side-scraping is also not viable in this tank, as the underside of the turret is only 40mm plate, and thus highly exposed to the effects of splash damage from High Explosive body-shots delivered to the flanks of the hull. Note that the 3D model of the tank shows a series of toolboxes over the track, however they are not a part of the hitbox.
Mobility
In comparison to other Tier VIII magazine-fed tanks, the Bisonte C45 has above-average maximum forward speed. Realising it, however, is a different matter as the poor power-to-weight ratio results in sluggish acceleration. Given the importance of fighting from a hull-down position, and the need to get into position as efficiently as possible, this tank will benefit greatly from fitting a Turbocharger.
Turret traverse on the Bisonte C45 isn't great, but isn't terrible, however the hull traverse is a triple-tie bottom place against other Tier VIII magazine-fed heavy tanks. Given its delicate hull, brawling isn't advisable in this tank, however if you're trying to dump a magazine to kill an enemy tank then you want to be confident that you can point your gun where it's needed. An Improved Rotation Mechanism will not be out of place on this tank, but vents will help you squeeze out a touch more DPM.
In conclusion
The innovative "compensated autoreloading" mechanic provides maximum readiness to fire the next round, however the ability to dump the clip should be used sparingly lest an underwhelming damage score from poor resultant damage-per-minute be realised. That's also assuming the enemy team doesn't realise your low rate of fire and punish you for your earlier impatience.
Once Holiday Ops 2021 has kicked off, Bisonte C45's spamming prammo from hull-down positions will be a common and unwelcome sight, particularly for same-tier and below vehicles. The tank will be considered OP by anyone who fails to study the tank and appreciate/exploit the weaknesses in its armour layout.
Wargaming's balance team have been often been criticised in recent times for introducing tanks to the game that have next-to-no exploitable weakspots. The game dumbs-down when a players response to any given situation is to just 'dab the 2-key'. The HE-vulnerability of the drivers hatch and the turret floor marks a pleasant change of course, where players facing down the Bisonte C45 have the opportunity to succeed just by playing a little smarter.
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Edited by pr154, 07 December 2020 - 07:22 AM.
