The T-10, as many others in the Soviet regime, had gone by other names in the past. With nothing more than shady details available, all what is known is the secretive T-10 once went by the name "IS-8". In an attempt to hide its true identity, it had undergone an HD surgery, forged new identification documents and moved into the World of Tanks.
In this guide, I shall cover all of the various Pros and Cons of the T-10, outline the most optimal ammo / consumable / equipment loadout and give you a general overview of its gameplay style. We'll also take a look into the gun and armor performance. We'll finally wrap up by comparing it to other Tier 9 Heavy Tanks and rating the tank. Let's get started, shall we?
Table of Contents:
General overview (Pros and Cons)
Equipment, ammo and consumable layout
Crew skills
Gun performance
Armor layout
Gameplay style
Comparison to other same-class tanks of its Tier
Overall Rating
General Overview (Basically a TL;DR of the rest of the guide):
Pros:
★ Great turret armor with small cupolas
★ Very fast for a heavy; it can keep up with medium tanks
★ Gun is quite reliable in all regards, including alpha, pen and reload
★ Can carry matches when needed
★ Thanks to the mobility, it's also very unpredictable
Neutrals:
↔ Hull armor can be questionable at times
↔ Wide turning arc
↔ Acceleration can be mediocre at times; especially over rough terrain
↔ Cupolas can still be hit at close range
↔ Gun depression isn't great
Cons:
Θ The ammo rack is rather large, and can be damaged from all sides
Θ Cannot sidescrape to save its life (Reverse side-scraping is necessary)
Θ A good crew is needed; especially 100% on major qualification and having Repairs trained
Gun Reliability .. 
- Generally, the gun is very reliable with quite effective characteristics. However, the aiming time is still quite lengthy, so don't expect to fire off at will all the time.
Frontal Armor Profile |. - Frontally, the armor can work very well if used correctly; even against high penetration guns. Hull-down is effective.
Overall Armor Profile | - For a Tier 9 vehicle, the armor is quite capable if you use hull-down and reverse side-scraping tactics. The tank can be penetrated, but is on the reliable side.
Survivability .. - Played well, the tank will stay alive long into the battle. It has the armor, HP and mobility to stay alive.
Flexibility |. - The combination of good armor, a good gun and a mobilie platform does very nice things for the tank. The only big downside is the lack of gun depression.
Mobility .o. - The tank is pretty quick for a heavy tank, but does have somewhat sluggish acceleration and a wider turning arc.
Agility |. - Despite being quick for a heavy, the tank still lacks some of the acceleration and traverse speed you'd need to go flanking things. You're not a 113!
Fear Factor |. - The tank can be threatening on the battlefield, but a good player can find a way to penetrate it in almost any situation. Thus, it's not that scary for the enemy.
Short-Term Impact .o. - The punchy gun and reliable armor allows you to get into the enemy's face and really begin annoying them; disrupting their formation.
Long-Term Impact .o - Over the long-term, with the mobility of the vehicle, the tank can have very good impacts on the battlefield.
Carry Potential o - The tank can carry matches without a doubt, but with weakpoints and a fragile ammo rack, sometimes you can't take larger onslaughts.
Profitability o - The gun is very reliable, but Tier 9 costs, high ammo costs and frequent ammo racks will result in not-so-great profitability. You won't lose any Credits though.
(Ignore the symbols before the bars, they're there to try to line the bars up.)
Equipment:
Personally, I mount Gun Rammer, Gun Laying Drive & Vertical Stabilizer on the T-10.
Recommended:
Gun Rammer: If you can mount a Gun Rammer, you should. Enough said.
Gun Laying Drive: Having a Russian, Stalin-guided gun comes at the cost of having Russian aiming time. You'll want to get the aiming time as low as possible; and GLD in combination of Stabilizer does a great job at this.
Vertical Stabilizer: With a good crew and a Vertical Stabilizer, the tank will be able to snap-shot fairly effectively even on the move; especially at closer ranges.
Optional:
Wet Ammo Rack: Having an Ammo Rack both in the front and sides, getting ammo racked is not that uncommon; especially since you are a brawling heavy tank. Full detonations are unlikely, but possible.
Improved Ventilation: A 5% boost to crew skills never hurt anybody; except for the enemy team.
Ammo:
My ammo layout on the T-10 is 17 AP, 10 HEAT and 3 HE.
30 rounds of ammunition isn't great, but with 440 alpha damage, you can still afford to carry a few HE shells around. The penetration on the gun is very nice, although the gun isn't the most accurate, so having the HEAT rounds against vehicles such as IS-7's will be useful.
I believe this is the most optimal ammo layout, and do not recommend making many changes to it.
Consumables:
For Consumables on the T-10, I use a Small First Aid Kit, Small Repair Kit and Automatic Fire Extinguisher. I do not recommend any other combination.
Small First Aid Kit: The Driver does reside in the lower plate, and your cupolas can and will be hit. A single, small med kit usually will get the job done.
Small Repair Kit: The ammo rack is often hit, so having a repair kit is rather useful.
Automatic Fire Extinguisher: Fires aren't that common, but being a Soviet tank, they're certainly still possible.
I do not recommend any other consumable loadout, although a Large Repair Kit may be useful if you're getting ammo racked through shots into your track wheel.
Crew Skills:
Crew Member:
Skill #1
Skill #2
Drop for:
Skill #3
Skill #4
Commander
Sixth Sense
Repairs
Repairs > BIA
Repairs
Situational Awareness
Gunner
Repairs
Snap Shot
Snap Shot > BIA
Snap Shot
Deadeye
Driver
Repairs
Smooth Ride
Smooth Ride > BIA
Smooth Ride
Clutch Breaking
Loader
Safe Stowage
Repairs
Repairs > BIA
Repairs
Intuition
You'll want your first set of skills and perks to be Repairs all across the board. When training the second set, retrain the Commander's first to 6th sense & the Loader's first to Safe Stowage. Then, begin re-training Repairs as the second set for the Commander and Loader.
After that, you'll want to get BIA and begin re-training the skills you dropped to get BIA, as your 3rd set of skills. After that, just pick up the remaining useful skills and perks.
Guns:
The T-10 gets a rather monstrous 122mm cannon with some quite respectable characteristics.
Below, I've compared the T-10's gun to its direct competitor at Tier 9, the ST-1. On the left is the T-10's cannon, on the right is the ST-1's gun. A blue value is superior, whilst a green value is relatively tied (Within 5% of the other value). (Please note that all values are "stock", prior to any equipment mounting)
Guns: T-10 (122mm) ST-1 (122mm)
Rate of Fire: 5.09 (4.70)
Aiming time: 2.68 (3.26)
Accuracy: .36 (.36)
DPM: 2,238.33 (2,070.03)
Penetration: 258/340/68 (258/340/68)
Damage: 440/440/530 (440/440/530)
Shell Velocity: 940/920/940 (940/920/940)
Soft Stats: .18/.18/.08 (.25/.25/.20)
Gun Angles: -5 / +15 (-8 / +16)
Ammo capacity: 30 (40)
The verdict? The T-10's gun is better in almost every way over the ST-1; with a significant advantage in gun handling (And thus, aiming time). Better DPM also does nice things for it.
However, the lack of gun depression is going to be the one very noticeable downside over the ST-1's comfortable 8 degrees. Watch out for the lack of gun depression, and you're a much better armed vehicle.
Armor Layout:
The hull armor feels a lot more like heavy / medium hull than a normal heavy tank. However, if you can hide the lower half of the hull, it does become rather strong indeed.
The hull does have somewhat of a piked nose, so trying to angle the vehicle as you would in other heavy tanks (Such as the E-75), isn't going to be a great idea unless you're hiding the inside half of the pike around a corner.
The tank will struggle to side-scrape normally around corners, due to the pike nose and frontal turret. However, the vehicle does have very nice opportunities to do reverse side-scraping (Same as regular side-scraping, except the tank is pointing in the opposite direction with the rear to cover, rather than the front).
The turret armor is very strong. If you can get into a hull-down position and get the gun firing, you can be extremely effective. However, as a Russian tank, you don't have any gun depression (ST-1 must be an imposter, it with its 8 degrees...).
If you can effectively hull-down, then you will get consistently high amounts of damage blocked by armor on a battle-to-battle basis.
How to play it:
This tank has a fast top speed of 50kph, and with a 750hp engine, you will get to that speed. Make use of it by following mediums or running to a forward position to go hull down and start laying shots into the enemy early on in the battle. The accuracy over range isn't too bad so you can snipe if you have to. However, anything beyond 350-400m and the accuracy will really begin to drop off.
Once the majority of the enemy team is engaged make use of your speed and initiate flanking attacks on unsuspecting targets. Try for 1v1 encounters that you can win. If you are going up against multiple enemy vehicles, you will want to hang back and let them come to you (and hopefully, into your allies).
If you walk into [quack] creek and are against a tier 10 tank you will want to face hug them if you have no other option. The T10 is a tallish tank and the enemy will (usually) only have your strong turret to shoot at. Between your shots wiggle your turret to reduce the chance of the enemy hitting your cupolas. Once they've fired a round, back up, get a good shot in, and re-enter your face-hug.
Please of course, do be wise, and don't try to face-hug E-100's with AP or JagPanzer E-100's. You will begin to regret your life decisions if you do that. Face-hugging Tier 10 medium tanks, 113's, E5's, etc. will work very well. Face-hugging high caliber guns, will not.
Comparison to same-Tier Heavy Tanks:
HP: Bad. 1,800 HP is only higher than two other Tier 9 heavy tanks, so don't expect to be eating up that many shells.
Armor: Average. The armor is pretty good, but it's certainly not a super-heavy, and it's always going to have a weakpoint somewhere that can be penetrated.
Mobility: Very Good. The T-10 shares very similar mobility to the WZ-111-14, with slightly better acceleration. Only the AMX 50 120 is truly going to be faster.
DPM: Very Good. The DPM is only lower than that of the Conqueror's, giving you some very scary damage output potential.
Penetration: Best in Class. The AP pen may be 1 single point less than that of the Conqueror, but your HEAT pen is 14mm better; thus you do take the "Best in class" spot.
Alpha damage: Average. 440 alpha damage is quite nice, but it doesn't keep up with the 128mm German cannons, or the WZ-111-14's 130mm cannon. 440 is thus "average".
Aiming Speed: Bad. 2.68 second aiming time isn't that bad all things considered, but it's only 4th out of 10 other vehicles. But it's much better than the ST-1 at least.
Gun Handling: Very Good. The T-10's gun handling is right on-par with the WZ-111-14 (Just slightly better on turret traverse), and only falls behind the Conqueror. It's a very reliable cannon with fairly good snap-shotting ability at closer to mid-ranged engagements.
Accuracy: Average. Even though the accuracy, is worse than most other Tier 9 heavies, it's only slightly so in most cases. 0.36 is a very respectable value all things considered.
Shell Velocity: Bad. 940 m/s isn't a bad value, and in fact is average. However, due to the 920m/s HEAT rounds, it falls into the bad category; since there are some other Tier 9 heavies which can use very high velocity APCR rounds as Premium.
View Range: Best in Class. 400m is actually standard for a Tier 9 heavy tank, but since nothing gets more than 400m, it's technically "Best in class". You can spot for yourself!
Camo Value: Very Good. For a Tier 9 heavy tank, your camo values are very good - Only the WZ-111-14 is stealthier. Combine that with a low profile, and it is possible to go un-spotted at longer ranges if you're in a bush. Regardless, it's a heavy tank, and not a 113. Camo isn't going to really matter.
Battle effectiveness: Very Good. The tank is one of the best Tier 9 tanks, and competes very favorably against the other top contenders, such as the Conqueror and WZ-111-14. You can carry battles whilst having a great time!
Overall Rating:
8.5/10 (Very Good)
Overall this tank would be defined as a heavy-medium. It's a fast tank with a punchy gun, but still has a few downsides. In my opinion this tank rates 8/10. If the gun's aiming time wasn't so long, and if the hull armor wasn't so annoyingly penetrated by Tier 8 medium tanks, it would get a 10/10 score.
Thanks for reading! I hope this guide was helpful! I genuinely wish all of you the very best of luck and fun, both in real life and on the battlefield.
This Tank Review was written with the help of Hyrule27, who has 3-marked the vehicle. Go send him some nice messages via. Forum PM! He'd appreciate it!
If you would like to see one of us review a vehicle, just let me know and I'll try to get to it as soon as possible!
(Be honest, it's a sexy tank. You know it's a sexy tank. Unfortunately Hyrule didn't send me a screenshot of his T-10, so this one from Google will have to do. )