Autoloader: The 114 Marathon and the Yoh grind...

 Some quick thoughts on the 114 Marathon and the Yoh Tank grind....

The 114 might be my kind of tank

I know it's got low DPM and it's slow but...

• High alpha
• Good accuracy
• Good turret armor
• Good gun depression
• Good standard pen

Sounds like my kind of heavy. And it's a premium (so I can make credits).

Make no mistake, it's a marathon

I see a few people on Facebook and such suggesting that if you're just a good player you shouldn't have any trouble getting it for free. That's like saying if you can run really fast you should be able to finish a marathon in 2 hours.

The problem is the volume. Even if you average 800 base XP per battle (which is pretty good) you're still probably going to have to play for at least 3 hours a day. Maybe if you're a top player and can knock out the Tier IX/X missions it could be faster, but even those are a grind - for example: Be tops in XP on BOTH teams 13 times. Even for a good player it could take at least 30 battles to do that and 30 battles usually takes at least 3-4 hours.

The goal

As usual I don't expect to finish all 10 stages. I don't have that kind of time. I'm just hoping to finish 5 or 6 and buy the 114 at half off.

Shortcut?

The first and second stages aren't TOO hard for Tier IX/X - I knocked off the first stage (at least 800 Base XP) in my STRV K in one battle. Second stage is to be tops in damage, I haven't managed that one yet, but I'm also trying to grind the Pawlack so only took one shot at it so far.

Grinding for the Yoh

I'm a collector so you know I had to grind the Yoh line. I already had 30K XP built up on the T1 Heavy (in anticipation of this event) so I could get the Pawlack right away. I'll probably grind the line up through Tier 8 and then maybe wait for a future On Track to buy the Tier IX/X...we'll see.

Thankfully I had hundreds of Blueprints saved up so I've got pretty much the whole line discounted 50% or more in XP. The grind should go pretty easy/smooth.

How is the Pawlack?

I've not quite finished the Pawlack yet (should tomorrow) but so far it's pretty good for a tier 6 heavy. Nothing super special about it, but the armor can be trollish, the gun is ok, and mobility isn't too bad.

Which gun?

The top gun has 240 alpha, but a slow reload and lower DPM. The middle gun only has 115 alpha but it's a fast firing gun (almost 19 rounds per min) and the gun handling is decent. I think I actually prefer the middle gun; as long as you're facing Tier 6 or below (or squishy 7s) you'll pen ok, and being able to pump out shots that fast is pretty nice.

GLHF!