I have quite unorthodox tank opinions. And heres another one: The AMX m4 45 is one of the best tech tree tier 7s.
But its very unappreciated because people play it wrong. Obviously playing it like an actual heavy, but people also overcompensate and play it far too passively.
Now people love to call bad tanks good for hipster points. But here are my qualifications in saying that its really REALLY good. Even though for the first 20 battles i hated it.
So 2150 dpg which is slightly higher than my other tier 7 heavies. But I'll break it down:
Firepower
+best pen in tier
+best dpm and dpm in class outside of the black prince
+10 degrees depression
-low alpha damage
-while relative to other its good, the gun handling feels really bad
It's just the best gun for a heavy tank in its tier. But the gun handling does hurt with the low alpha
Armour
+ you occasionally get bounces
+1600 is a LOT of hp
-tier 6 mediums will snap shot your through the front plate at 300m and pen
-152mm derps will pen your side and rear every time
yeah its bad, everyone knows its bad. But it's not nothing and you'll get life saving RNG bounces
Mobility
+almost medium speed
-top speed at 35 isn't amazing
its great,
So what do we get from that? You don't want to trade and wont hold up in a long fight. BUT, you have 10 degrees of gun depression and 2500 dpm, you control any fight you take. It has the tools to both absolutely punish any mistakes by the enemy as well as to deal with any 1v1 if you've saved your hp properly.
Look at the stats compared to tier 8 mediums and a tiger:
it has more dpm, pen and HP than the lot.
If the tanks faster than you can overwhelm them with hp and DPM. Which is how you have to play it: decisively. It's not a heavy and its not a medium and its certainly not a TD. If you're top tier and full hp you can overwhelm a whole flank with your huge sack of hp and dpm. It's like a Tiger I only it gets out so much more damage because of the extra speed, gun depression, traverse, a less horrible aim time and all you have to give up is some mediocre armour.
It can both make things happen and exploit it when its goes your way, thats what a good tank is.