T34: the Dinosaur of Blitz
Upload: July 15, 2020 - Last update: July 16, 2020
T34 has been part of the game since the very beginning. It actually wasn’t a premium tank to begin with, but part of the American tech tree. It got replaced and turned into a premium. The history of the real T34 isn’t that special either. It never saw real combat, being a side project to the T30 heavy tank (which is part of the TD line in Blitz). It was used as a tank to destroy Japanese bunkers at the end of World War 2, aswell as a training vehicle. However, despite from the somewhat unimpressive trackrecord in real life, the T34 has a lot going for it in game.
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Being the hull down king of Blitz, it’s one of the most fun and great training tanks which you should have in your garage, being a great stepping stone in your journey to become a great Blitz player. It also makes a ton of credits: Bushka calls it the ‘Bank of America’. Some people believe the tank is outdated and powercreeped. They could not be more wrong! In this review I will tell and show you how to play this tank effectively.
248 mm of American Freedom
The T34 has two great assets: it’s turret armor and gun. I will come back shortly to the armor profile, let’s talk about the gun first. Being the highest penning tier 8 gun, apart from TDs of course, you will never have any issue penning any tank you come across. A lot of tier 9 and even 10 tanks don’t have the pen of the T34, that says a lot about the strength of this great gun. With these terrific numbers, coupled with a great 10 degrees of gun depression, comes a price though: while the alpha is a perfectly middle of the pack 400, the dispersion isn’t great and the aim time is horrendous for a heavy tank gun. That’s why I want to stress now already that you should use all equipment slots on this tank, and pick every single one that reduces the aim time of the gun (eg vertical stabilizer and EGLD). It will never snap shot like a boss but you won’t get a Russian like gun with terrible accuracy at least! The DPM is fairly low but with outstanding pen comes good effective DPM, which makes the DPM more useful compared to other low DPM heavies like the IS-5.
Speed-wise, the T34 is an actual dinosaur. It’s top speed is okay, but it picks up fairly slowly and both the turret and hull traverse are glacial. You have to watch your back and sides at all times to anticipate on possible danger from lights and mediums, once they are behind you you’re toast (toast is great, as long as you aren’t the one getting roasted, right?).
Next I would like to discuss the armor profile. The T34 puts all it’s eggs in one basket: the monstreous turret, resulting in no hull armor to speak of. While the frontal hull can bounce an odd shell with some angling and/or luck, the sides will bounce nothing, unless your tracks save the day. What’s worse, is the fact that big 152 guns with 90mm of penetration can go through those sides with HE. Fortunately the tracks are huge, soaking up badly placed shots easily. The back of the hull is paper as well, HE-able by any gun caliber above 85mm (200 alpha guns). Guard your back by everything you got! In the picture below you can see the armor thickness of the hull, sides and back. Note that the back of the turret is very strong too and can confuse players not familiar with the armor lay-out of the T34!
Make sure to look closely at all these armor values before you jump into battle. Want to take a look for yourself? Go to Blitzhangar (credits to them for these images) and you can play with every possible angle. An alternative is the inspector app, even though that one is not for free if you want to check out premium tanks. Very worth it though for the small price they ask. |
How to tame this beast
We have established already that all the armor is located on the turret. Against tier 9 tanks, the hull might as well be wet tissue. That’s where the magnificent gun depression comes into play. By hiding the hull and only showing the rock hard turret, other players can only pen the little hatch on top (hard to hit, impossible to hit when using 10 degrees of gun depression) or the turret ring which is a hard shot anyway. Some very high pen TDs can pen your turret cheeks, that’s why I recommend you to always wiggle while reloading. Thanks to the spaced armor in the turret, even high caliber HE shells don’t do much damage and often bounce on the mantlet, causing zero damage. The gun takes a while to aim and the dispersion factors are pretty bad, making this a frontline tank. As long as you don’t show your turret you have nothing to worry about. Don’t snipe in this tank, you will be a burden on your team and they won’t be happy with you!
If you ever get caught out in the open, which happens to the best of us, make sure to have some hard cover close so you can’t get COD’d and have a possibility to get hulldown. If this does not work, you will have to angle. The trick is to look closely to where their gun is pointing, and angling accordingly. Since both your front and side are weak, you can play your opponent by changing your angle last moment to cause a bounce. Never angle too much though or your side is an autopen for nearly every gun you will face. The image below shows this thought process:
I already mentioned how the T34 is not a snapshotting tank by any means, but you can reduce your chances of missing shots by a fair margin, thanks to the available equipment. The T34 is a tank that greatly benefits from being equipped properly, and it well worth the investment if you intend to make this one of your main credit grinders. I advice you to use the following equipment.
Equipment
I mentioned earlier to use the aiming equipment, because while the dispersion isn’t great, the aim time is much worse. I advice you to use the rammer because both AP and APCR pen are so great, there is no need to have even better pen with calibrated shells, certainly because both shell types only get a small bonus anyway, unlike HEAT. Consumer delivery system, because the reload is too long to fit more than 1 or 2 shots in one use of adrenaline. Always use Toolbox because enhanced tracks is mostly useless. The other equipment slots are up to your personal preference!
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Provisions & consumables
I run my T34 with the following provisions:
- Big food, to enhance the crew by 10 percent. This is a must in this tank to mainly reduce the aimtime and doesn’t cost you anything since the T34 makes great credits.
- Small food, with the same thoughts in mind.
- Big fuel, to make the tank slightly more manageable. You will get more easily out of trouble and people won’t COD you as easily.
- You can switch out the small food for protective kit, but it’s not really necessary in this tank in my opinion because of the great turret armor. If you get hit a lot it might be a good, albeit more expensive, option for you.
On the consumables front, I use the following:
- Adrenaline: a great tool if you catch someone off guard (or if someone does it to you). Expensive, so make sure not to waste it.
- Multi purpose kit: fixing your tank, patching up crew members and putting out the flames, all in one package. By far the best consumable and a must have.
- Repair kit: huge tracks can tank shots for you, but will also fall off quite regulary. Don’t get caught out without any means to get away, this is why you run double repair kit!
- I would suggest other consumables, but I think this is by far the best solution. If you want to go really cheap, you can go for repair kit, med kit and fire extinguisher. This will work for most games but will get you into trouble in others. You won’t pay as much credits this way.
Conclusion & other review material
The T34 actually IS the dinosaur of Blitz, one of the more dangerous species, that is. With a high penning gun and decent DPM, coupled with great gun depression and a rock hard turret, this tank is equally great in tier 7,8 and 9. Make sure not to get caught up in the open because the hull armor is on the weak side. Thanks to the 248 AP pen, you rarely need prammo, and together with a good credit coefficient of 170 percent, this tank won’t let you down in the silver making department. It’s also one of the best tanks to learn hull down with, you will always know if you’re showing your hull or not. That’s why I advice this tank to players as one of their first tier 8 premium tanks. Don’t forget to grind for a tech tree tier 8 tank first of course, there is no need to rush!
I’m not a YouTube guy, but I know some of you are. I hope you liked the read, but I know some of you want more. There are tons of great Blitz Youtubers out there, providing the community with great insights and mastery gameplay to show what I told you in this review. Make sure to check them out!
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