I am happy to report that I reached the AMX 50 B, the tier X tank of the French heavy line in World of Tanks. I'm way early, the Top of the Tree event goes until the end of the month, but I had bought a €10 boost that gave me the 5x for victory XP not just once per day, but three times per day. That does speed up things a lot, and so only tier IX of this event felt a bit like a grind.

However I still have mixed feelings towards the French heavy tanks with their autoloader guns and paper-thin armor. Sometimes one feels a bit persecuted when driving one, as enemy tanks will ignore other tanks and shoot you first whenever they see you. Not just because every shot on a French heavy penetrates due to the armor being negligible for this tier, but also because of the threat it poses. In one of my tier IX games the enemies had all decided to rather shoot at my team mates than me. In that game I did some insane damage, twice the hit points of my own tank. If you can unload a full clip into the side or back of an enemy tank, it gets devastating pretty fast. So I gained some understanding why everybody seemed to seek me out for destruction.

The result of all this is that while me battle results in World of Tanks are always somewhat inconsistent, this volatility goes way up when I play French heavy tanks. Some very good games, but a lot of games where I die before reloading the second magazine. On average the Top of the Tree event lowered my overall WN8 rate, because I had more very bad games than good games. I know that the trick is to stay behind and act as support, but in a random battle that doesn't work so well, because you can't rely on the front tanks doing a good job "tanking" for you.