E 50 M

The E 50 M is one of the top tier German medium tanks, and it features all the capabilities you could want in a tank. E 50 M has very strong armour on both the hull and the turret, an accurate gun with good alpha, with decent mobility for its armour.

Armour

(The E 50 M in the images is using Improved Assembly)

Drag slider Right –> to view 257mm AP
Drag slider <– Left to view 330mm HEAT

Flat ground:
Upper plate 360mm
Lower plate 185mm

Turret face 305mm
Turret cheeks 350mm
Cupola 200-265mm

vs 300mm HEAT (top image), 330mm HEAT (bottom image)
Using -8 gun depression

Upper plate 435-460mm
Turret face 315mm
Turret cheeks 410-440mm
Cupola 220-420mm

Armour vs all tier 9-10 tanks:
The E 50 M’s armour performs in the same way against both tier 9 and tier 10 tanks.

Any enemy will be able to easily penetrate the lower plate of the tank, no enemy will be able to penetrate the upper plate of the tank (unless in faceug) with standard ammunition.

Tier 9 heavies, and tier 9-10 mediums will both struggle to penetrate the turret of the E 50 M with premium ammunition, with the exception of tanks using calibrated shells, or tanks with high penetration APCR.

Tanks with 320mm+ premium penetration can reliably penetrate the turret cheeks, and tanks with 340mm+ premium penetration can reliably penetrate the E 50 M’s upper plate if its not angled.

Essentially, the upper plate will withstand premium ammo against most enemies. The turret will be penetrated by more tanks’ premium ammo, but its a smaller and harder target to hit, and the lower plate can be penetrated by all enemies.

Side armour:
E 50 M’s sides are 111mm thick above the tracks, and 102mm thick behind the tracks. There is a 8mm spaced skirt covering the upper area of the tracks, and its spaced quite far from the hull, offering decent protection. The tracks themselves are worth 25mm of armour.

What all this means is that the E 50 M can sidescrape better than other mediums, as its side armour is actually very good.

Gun

The E 50 M mounts a 10,5cm (105mm) gun

Firepower:
-Ammo: AP/HEAT/HE.
-Penetration: 241/295/60mm.
-Alpha damage: 360/315/480
-Reload time: 6.5s
-DPM: 3304

Handling:
–Estimated aim time is 2.9/3.1s
–Base aim time is 2.2s, but it can get down to 1.62s.
-Dispersion is 0.308/0.262
–Gun handling is 0.14/0.14/0.08, or 0.12/0.12/0.07 with Vertical Stabilizer.

Usability:
-Shell velocities are 850/840/820 m/s
-Gun depression is -8 degrees around the entire tank, except the rear where its -0 degrees.

This is overall a very good gun, it has great accuracy, decent aim time, good penetration on premium ammo, a quick reload, and decent handling. Alpha damage is slightly less than other 105mm guns on its AP, but the E 50 M has great HE shells with increased alpha and slightly increased penetration. Standard penetration is poor due to the fact that its APCR.

Its important to note with tier 10 mediums, nearly all tanks have “perfect” guns, which are accurate, quick aiming, well-handling, etc., and this is just due to them being top tier tanks and having the best stats in the game.
Hence with tanks like the E 50 M, with 0.14/0.14/0.08 gun handling, this is not actually bad gun handling overall, its just that when its compared to other tier 10 mediums, its slightly worse.

Mobility

Raw stats:
-Forward speed is 60km/h.
-Reverse speed is -20km/h.
-Raw acceleration rate is 20.5 hp/t.
-Engine power is 1271hp for its 62 ton weight.

Hard terrain mobility:
-Actual acceleration is 25.6 hp/t.
-Traverse speed is 59.3 deg/s.

Medium terrain mobility:
-Actual acceleration is 20.5 hp/t.
-Traverse speed is 47.4 deg/s.

Terrain resistance stats:
–Terrain resistances are 0.8/1/1.3

This mobility is below average for a tier 10 medium, however its still good for how armoured the E 50 M is. Acceleration is good, but the traverse speed is noticeably worse than other mediums, especially on medium terrain. The top speed of 60km/h is great, but is hard to reach of not going slightly downhill.

When driving the tank, be aware of the size of the tank, since its very large hull, combined with slower turning speed, may throw off players who are used to a small and nimble tank like the 121B or the T-62A.

Equipment Loadout

Gun rammer:
Gun rammer improves the reload from 6.9s to 6.5s, and DPM from 3139 to 3304.

While calibrated shells does work on the tank, gun rammer is generally a better choice for most mediums, due to playing a quite active and flanking role, not often facing heavy armour, and needing DPM to brawl with enemy mediums. The E 50 M is no exception, as it can play quite an aggressor/brawler role due to its great DPM, high HP, and strong armour.

Improved Assembly:
While the E 50 M is an “armoured medium tank”, it doesn’t often play with a very heavy emphasis on that strong armour (unless you solely look for hulldown positions when playing the tank), as it also has great mobility and a great gun it can rely on (hence its not “heavium” tank).

Since the armour it has is already so strong, with the hull and turret both being very challenging to penetrate (especially on a moving target), the E 50 M really doesn’t benefit that much from enhanced armour.

It would make a noticeable improvement to the armour stat, but it doesn’t benefit the playstyle or make any noticeable changes in its actual armour performance in battle. For this reason, improved assembly is better for the tank, as it will allow the tank to take more hits in battle and survive longer.

Improved assembly would be more useful in the majority of battles, improving the E 50 M’s already great base HP of 1900 up to 1976 HP.

Vertical Stabilizer:
The E 50 M has one of the more accurate tier 10 medium guns, with 0.308 dispersion. There really isn’t any need to improve this. Its generally better to improve the gun handling, which is slightly below average compared to other tier 10 mediums.

Improved gun handling will let the tank snap in more shots quickly, as the gun will be more accurate when the tank is moving, and when aiming in after its stopped moving, and this is better for the active playstyle of medium tanks.

Gameplay advice

The E 50 M plays a fairly standard medium tank role in battle, but it has a few differences in gameplay due to its characteristics.

Notably, its large size, slower traverse, ramming capabilities, and hull armour.

General gameplay:
The E 50 M’s role in battle is that of a “standard” medium tank. It should go to the medium flank, can contest dominant and early positions, brawl with enemy mediums, and flank around slower tanks. Just play it like any other medium, but note some gameplay aspects below.

Large size:
The E 50 M is enormous, its one of the largest medium tanks in the game, and it has a very wide and tall hull with a fairly long turret. This makes it very easy to hit, and easy to spot.

Some positions you use in other medium tanks may not work for the E 50 M, as its just a larger, taller, and wider vehicle. This also means, sometimes your -8 gun depression may not “feel like” -8, the hull is wide and long, and your turret is middle mounted. On rough terrain, your wide hull and tracks may catch uneven terrain and wedge the hull up.

Also be wary of your driving, the E 50 M’s size and slower traverse make it a bit harder to maneuver than most other tier 10 mediums, and it may cause you to crash into things or miss a corner.

Ram enemies:
Due to the high top speed, great acceleration, strong hull front, and being the 3rd heaviest medium tank in game, the E 50 M is perfect for ramming enemy tanks.

You can easily out-ram all medium tanks, and even some heavies, like the Kranvagn, IS-4, WZ-113 etc. Just don’t go ramming tanks like the VK 72.01 (K) or VK 90.01 (P).

What to ram and when:
If you’re playing for wins, don’t ram enemies when you are quite low on health, or they are high on health. Similarly, the best “trade” in a ram will come from a tank that’s much lighter than you (for example, a 37 ton T-62A), rather than a similar weight tank (such as the 56.8 ton T110E5).

When you ram similar weight tanks, you will often come out taking less damage than the enemy, but a significant amount of your HP will also be gone.

So for the T110E5 situation, if you ram the T110E5 for 300 damage, you might take 200-250 damage in exchange for it. With lighter tanks, like the T-62A, if you ram it for 300 damage, you may only take 40-100 damage for that ram.

If you just want to play for fun, then don’t care as much about the weight and situation of the game. If you’re low on HP, you could use that last remaining HP to ram a full health enemy, just for fun. It still deals damage, but you may die.
(Still don’t go ramming VKs and E 100s, you will barely damage them)

Be confident while hulldown:
The armour of the E 50 M does hold up very well while its lower plate is hidden. The hull is strong enough to the point where no enemy medium or light tank can penetrate it, and the turret face is fairly small.

When hulldown, the E 50 M will bounce most shots, but there are weakpoints enemies could hit, and those are the turret face left and right of the gun. You can move the tank slightly to throw off the enemies’ aim, and they may accidentally hit the gun mantlet or turret cheeks, both of which are stronger than the flat turret face.

Avoid facehugging enemies:
Due to the E 50 M’s hull armour relying so heavily on its good angles, it becomes very weak when angled downwards (going down a hill) or when looked down on (such as in a facehug).

The hull is also very large, so its rarely the face where enemies won’t be able to aim down on it, just due to the E 50 M being a big tank.

The images shown below demonstrate this perfectly.
The tank shooting the E 50 M is the Leopard 1, the Leopard 1 has calibrated shells equipped, so has above average standard penetration for a tier 10.

The Leopard is very easily able to penetrate the upper plate, even with its AP. While most tanks won’t have the 268mm AP of this Leopard 1, most enemy mediums will have 290-300mm of HEAT penetration, which can cut through the upper plate when at a similar angle.

You can mitigate this by turning the hull so its angled, giving it higher effective thickness, but high penetration enemies will still be able to penetrate easily, so its best not to get into a facehug in the first place.

Avoid facehugging enemies, as most can hit the hull, and nearly all can penetrate it with premium ammo.

The top image is showing 268mm AP penetration.
The bottom image is showing 330mm HEAT penetration.

There is one exception to this facehug rule, and that is if you ram an enemy. Ramming puts you in the same position as a facehug, but the difference is, the enemy has just taken a huge amount of ram damage.

If its optimal (as in, the enemy can’t easily take you on due to either low penetration, low HP, low DPM, long reload, etc), you can stay in the fachug and angle the hull in order to destroy that enemy.

An advantage of facehugging is that enemies will find it very hard to run away, so you can use the ram damage with your DPM and the facehug to fully take out the enemy tank.

If the situation is not optimal (such as your tank is low HP and the enemy may kill you), then continuing to facehug the enemy could result in your tank’s destruction. However, as said above, its hard to run away form a facehug, so unless there is a good position that’s easy to reach, running away may also get you killed.
(For this scenario, just don’t ram high HP enemies while you have low HP)

The E 50 M has well-rounded statistics, which lets it play a “standard/generic” medium role. While it does have some caveats due to its size, weight, and armour, it has the same gameplay as most medium tanks, it just has to account for these differences, and occasionally ram enemies for big damage.

Overall

Overall the E 50 M is a good tank. It combines many enjoyable aspects together, and it can be very fun when you play it less seriously and ram enemies.

It has very impressive ramming potential, being one of the best in game thanks to its high weight and very strong frontal hull armour. The turret and hull sides are also very impressive for a medium tank, especially considering the high level of speed and acceleration that this tank can achieve. Its gun is good, with great aim time and dispersion, quite a quick reload, and good DPM. The traverse speed of this tank is notably lower than other tier 10 mediums, and the handling isn’t bad but is also below average for a tier 10 tank.

Is it worth grinding?

The E 50 M is a tank worth grinding. Its a tank that offers everything in one package, having great armour, being quite mobile, and having a great gun. The grind to this tank isn’t easy, but the tank itself is very nice and quite unique in tier 10.

Most players should be able to enjoy what this tank offers, however if you’re a tier 10 medium tank connoisseur, be prepared for a slower traverse and downgraded gun handling (as most tier 10 MT have a similar level of traverse speed and handling, the E 50 M has notably less). Also watch out for its large size, as even though this has many standard medium stats, it does feel quite different while driving it due to its size and weight.

Camo cost:

“Roaring” camo: 2D, costs 2,550 gold

“Monster” camo: 2D, costs 2,550 gold

“Monster Evo” camo: 3D, animated, costs 5,500 gold

Tech tree overview

To get to the E 50 M, you will need to grind through the armoured German medium tree. This tree is full of average to well armoured mediums, all with great guns and decent mobility. All tanks in this tree from tier 7 onwards are quite heavy and are great for ramming.

Most tanks in this line have quite horrible stock grinds, being very sluggish for mediums, and not having great guns or turret armour. Most tanks don’t have intermediate modules though, so its quite quick to upgrade them.

-Tiers 1-4 are all fairly similar tanks, having decent armour, but not reliable. They all have great top guns and also decent mobility.

When stock they are all also decent, as they are so low tier the grind is really quick.

Note that with the Panzer III, the stock gun is better than the top gun. It trades off some DPM, penetration, and accuracy, but it has -10 gun depression. The stock gun is far more flexible due to this, as the top gun only has -6 gun depression and its quite hard to use gun depression positions.

With the Panzer IV D, upgrade the engine, tracks, and turret before the gun. The stock gun is actually very good and has a quick reload, and the tracks and engine greatly increase the tank’s mobility.

-Tier 5 is the VK 16.02 Leopard, a light tank with an autocannon. This tank is very quick and mobile, and actually has decent armour for a light. It has good DPM (if penetrating all shells), but low penetration. Its total burst damage is 300 on AP, which is very high in tier 5. Note that this tank has very low HP, and gun depression is only -4 degrees on the front, but -10 degrees on the sides. The gun is also very inaccurate, but has amazing handling, dispersion-after-shot, and aim time (so use refined gun).

The stock grind of this tank is quite horrible, being very slow with its stock engine and tracks, having very poor DPM, much lower burst damage, and much slower unload time. The gun or engines should be upgraded first, leave the tracks until last.

-Tier 6 is the VK 30.01 (D), its fairly quick for a medium tank, with a nice gun, but not much armour. This is quite a “standard” medium in tier 6, being similar to the Sherman tanks, Chi-To, or Panther tanks, it differs by having good penetration and higher top speed than most other mediums.

The stock grind of this tank is ok. It doesn’t have anything too terrible about it, but it does feel like a stock tank (fairly slow, lower DPM than most, not great accuracy).

-Tier 7 is the Panther I, and is the first tank with traits like the top tier E 50 M. This tank has good frontal armour and decent side armour, great mobility and speed, and a quick firing gun with very high penetration.
There’s also an alternative 8,8cm gun with higher alpha and lower penetration, which offers a different playstyle. This gun may already be unlocked from the VK 30.01 (P), VK 30.02 (D), VK 36.01 (H), or Tiger (P).

The Panther’s stock grind is not great, its very slow with a weak engine, and has a weak gun mantlet (only 105mm of armour). The stock gun is actually pretty decent, but still gets outcompeted by enemy tier 7 tanks. Its advisable to upgrade the engine of this tank first, as it gives the tank a really big mobility boost. Then upgrade the turret. After that, decide on which gun you want to use for the grind, as some players may just not like the low alpha 7,5cm gun, and will prefer the higher alpha 8,8cm gun.

Note that the 7,5cm gun has high penetration, a quicker reload, and better accuracy; but it has much worse worse alpha (60 less). This makes the 7,5cm gun worse for trading and flexibility in battle.
The 8,8cm gun has a nice 220 alpha with a decent 5.6s reload and good DPM; however its accuracy and penetration are significantly less than the other gun (but still not bad for its caliber). This gun is better for damage trading and peeking shots, but has less raw firepower than the 7,5cm.

-Tier 8 is the Panther II, a very strong medium tank in tier 8 with an amazing gun, great mobility, and strong frontal armour. This tank is very accurate and has high DPM, though premium penetration isn’t high. Its quick in all mobility aspects, and it has a solid frontal armour profile (about 190mm on turret and 200mm on hull). This tank is a notable upgrade from the Panther I in most aspects, but the -8 gun depression is the most notable.

The stock grind of this tank isn’t too bad. The top engine is already unlocked from the Panther I, and same for one of the 8,8cm guns. You’ll only need to research the tracks, turret, and top 8,8cm gun to be fully upgraded.
The stock gun has low alpha, but is extremely accurate and has better penetration than the top gun. The stock turret is weak so it won’t bounce shots like the top turret does, and the stock tracks have terrible terrain resistances which cause the tank to be quite sluggish.

-Tier 9 is the E 50, it keeps the same traits as previous tanks, with very good accuracy, great DPM, high top speed, and strong hull armour. However it also loses some traits, as the E 50 has very weak turret armour, a poor acceleration rate, and low penetration. This tank is good for damage dealing due to its amazing gun with good alpha and DPM, but it can’t bounce shots on the turret, as its the same thickness as the Panther II’s turret (but 1 tier higher). The mobility isn’t great for a medium, and this tank hardly ever reaches its top speed due to poor traverse and acceleration rates.

The stock grind of this tank is terrible, the modules are expensive to research, and the stock ones just don’t work well in tier 9. The engine and tracks are only slightly worse than the top ones, so these aren’t worth researching first. The top turret should be researched first, then the top 10,5cm gun, as the gun is what makes this tank work. After that then research the engine and tracks if you feel its necessary.
Avoid researching the 8,8cm L/100, its exclusive to the E 50 only, and it costs a lot of XP. Its a worse gun than the top 10,5cm, so there isn’t any point researching it.

(Note that when playing this tank, frontal gun depression is -5 degrees, side gun depression is -8 degrees)

Tier 10 is the E 50 M, by far the most well armoured tank of this branch tier-for-tier, also sporting the best mobility out of the line. This tank keeps a similar 10,5cm gun to the E 50, with good accuracy and DPM, but the E 50 M gets a very nice upgrade of -8 gun depression over the front of the tank.

Historical info:

The E 50 M was a real tank concept.

Of the turreted Entwicklung series tanks (E series), the only tank that had any form of turret plans was the E 100. All the other turreted E tanks (the E 75 and E 50) only had hull plans.

The turrets portrayed in game on these E series E 50 and E 75 tanks are all fakes. They are a realistic portrayal of what Germany may have used had the tanks’ development continued, as the E 50 was supposed to replace the Panthers, and the E 75 was supposed to replace the Tiger II (also meant to use a Tiger II turret).

Hence the E 50’s stock turret is just a Panther ausf. F’s “schmalturm” turret, and the top turret is a modified/upgraded version of that turret. The E 75’s stock turret is just a Tiger II’s Henschel turret, and the top turret is just a modified/upgraded version of that turret.

What is the E 50 M?
E 50 M was a concept of the E 50, for a rear transmission version of the E 50 tank.

As no E series hulls were built (except for the E 100’s hull), and the turrets for the E 50 not planned, the appearance of the E 50 M is made up by Wargaming, who actually has a patent for the E 50 M’s design.

Appearance:
The appearance of the tank is quite realistic as it closely resembles the original E 50 design, having largely the same hull design, except with some differences to accommodate for the rear transmission, which is the entire concept that this tank is based off of.

The hull sides are straight and uniform rather than the E 50’s, which angles up towards the front of the tank. This is to accommodate the large drive wheel at the rear of the tank rather than the front. The drive wheel is at the rear due to the rear transmission.

The engine deck exhausts and grilles (along with the engine itself) have also been moved forward slightly on the rear of the hull, to make space for the transmission at the very back.

Due to a more forward engine, and the transmission no longer being at the front, the turret is also mounted further forward on the tank compared to the E 50.

Interestingly, all this does make a difference in game. Unlike most German tanks, (which nearly all have a frontal transmission behind the lower plate), the E 50 M has no chance of receiving engine damage when it gets hit on the front of the tank, whether its through the idler wheel or through the lower plate, removing a very common problem you face when playing German tanks in the game.

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