M-IV-Y

The M-IV-Y is a tier 8 American heavy tank. It has good mobility, a very solid armour profile, and “fake” autoloader gun that sports great gun depression and handling.
Its currently the only tank in game sporting this unique gun system, having a clip reload that is barely longer than its intra-clip reload.

1. Armour
2. Playing against an M-IV-Y
3. Gun
4. Mobility
5. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
6. Gameplay advice
7. Understanding the gun of M-IV-Y
8. Overall
9. Is it worth getting?
10. Most recently sold for:
11. Historical Note:

Note:
This gun system should be viewed like a regular cyclic gun, but with a permanent adrenaline boost activated. It can use this “adrenaline” for 4 shots before the “adrenaline” has to recharge. It can also choose manually when it wants to recharge its “adrenaline”, such as before it rushes an enemy.
While you could argue “every autoloader is like this”, they aren’t, regular autoloader intra-clip reloads are so fast that they feel like the gun is actually automatically loading. They also usually only have 3 shells, and their reloads are also generally significantly longer, which means they have to wait a more lengthy amount of time.

The reason that it would be incorrect to view the M-IV-Y’s gun as “just being a regular gun but every 4th shell has double the reload time” is because that isn’t the case. A “regular” 105mm gun on a tier 8 heavy has between a 7.6s and 8.4s reload, however when those tanks use adrenaline, their reload decreases to 6.3s and 7.0s, much closer to the 6.98s intra-clip of the M-IV-Y. So the gun is more similar to a regular gun with adrenaline active.

Armour

(The M-IV-Y in the images is using Enhanced Armour)

Drag slider right -> to view 225mm AP
Drag slider <- left to view 265mm APCR

Armour when flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 240-500mm (weak bar near front 215mm)
Lower plate 170-180mm
Turret 260-500mm
Hatch 115-230mm

Armour vs tier 7: 
The upper plate and turret are fully impenetrable to all tier 7 tanks, except a few TDs or high-penetration HTs. The hatch is a weakpoint, however it can be hidden by raising and turning the gun. The lower plate is also weak to most tanks, only very low penetration mediums with about 145-150mm will struggle against it.

Armour vs tier 8: 
In tier 8 battles, the hull and turret are still fully impenetrable to all tanks other than very high penetration TDs.

There is a weakpoint on the hull, which is a narrow bar towards the front of the hull, this can be penetrated by tanks with about 210mm AP.

When using gun depression, the only weakpoint will be the hatch, or the area above the gun (weak to high penetration HEAT, but not AP or APCR). Raising the gun up and to the right will hide the hatch, but tanks with about 270-280mm penetration can penetrate under the gun.
When using gun depression, if your hull is exposed then most enemies can still shoot that weak bar on the upper plate, so try to expose only the turret or part of the upper plate.

Armour vs tier 9: 
Tier 9 tanks will still be unable to penetrate the turret or hull, only tanks with about 300-320mm of premium penetration will have a chance of penetrating these areas.
Most enemies will be able to penetrate that weak bar on the upper plate, and the hatch is still a weakpoint you should try to hide in every situation.

Playing against an M-IV-Y

The main thing to understand when playing against an M-IV-Y is to treat it like its not an autoloader. Instead treat it like a tank that’s has the adrenaline consumable activated.

Don’t wait for the M-IV-Y to go on a reload and retreat:
You will often find it very hard to know when an M-IV-Y is reloading, it may have started fighting you with only 3 shells, it may have started reloading its magazine after it shot only 3 shells, it may have started with a full magazine.

Due to a 6.98s intra clip reload, and quite a large shell capacity, unless you saw it shoot 4 shells over 21 seconds, its almost impossible to know how many shells an M-IV-Y has when it started fighting against you. It will also almost never retreat when reloading, a good player will “fake a reload” and pretend they are still ready to shoot, especially as this tank only has a 13s magazine reload.

Don’t wait for the M-IV-Y’s magazine reload, just treat it like it doesn’t have one, put in a shell after you see it shoot, then try to avoid it until you have a shell reloaded and ready to shoot again.

Shoot the hatch dead center:
The cupola’s “mounting points” (directly below, and to the left and right of the hatch) are 250mm thick. So shoot the middle of the hatch, not the edges, or the bottom, if you aim too high, you shot will go into the sky.

The rangefinders are weakpoints:
The rangefinders on this tank are 2 small ¬ shaped structures on each side of the turret’s roof. These are not spaced armour and can be penetrated by tanks with about 180mm of penetration.

Shoot above the turret’s shield if the player raises the gun to hide their hatch:
As shown in the image below, when the tank raises its gun to try cover its hatch, it exposes the weak inner-turret armour, which is usually hidden behind the shield of the turret. This area that sticks up can be penetrated by guns with about 210mm of penetration.
You can also try shoot under the gun, but as you can see, the armour there is actually much thicker, and even 265mm APCR bounced off.

Gun

M-IV-Y mounts a 105mm “autoloader” gun.

-Alpha damage is 310 on AP, 260 on APCR, and 420 on HE.
-The gun has 4 shells with a 6.98s intra-clip, so in 20.94s it can deal a 1240 damage burst.
-Reload time is 13.6s, giving it 2156 DPM.
-Penetration on AP is 218mm, APCR is 265mm, and HE is 53mm.
–Estimated aim time is 3.3/3.5s
–Base aim time is 2.43s, but it can get down to 1.87s
-Dispersion is 0.362/0.308
–Gun handling is 0.17/0.1/0.14, or 0.15/0.09/0.12 with Vertical Stabilizer.

Overall this gun feels very comfortable, good gun depression, decent aim time, amazing gun handling, and good penetration. Its poor accuracy is not too noticeable thanks to having decent aim time and very good gun handling.

The damage output is good as the tank is basically able to choose when it uses its “adrenaline” (explained more in depth in gameplay advice below), and its quick clip reload is very easy to work with. 
This “adrenaline” is the DPM when unloading, which is 2665, this is a 6.98s reload for 310 alpha, then you have a 13.6s “cooldown” after your 4 shots.

Mobility

-Top speed is 40km/h forwards, and -18km/h in reverse,
-In game acceleration is shown as 16.2hp/t, it has a decent 759 horsepower engine for its 47 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 14.7 hp/t on hard terrain, and 10.8 hp/t on medium terrain.
-Traverse speed is 40.8 deg/s on hard terrain, and 29.9 deg/s on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are 1.1/1.5/2.3

Overall the mobility of the M-IV-Y is above average. Its performance on hard terrain is very impressive, and on medium terrain it still has decent traverse speeds and acceleration. Its reverse speed is very comfortable and can allow the tank to get into cover much quicker than most other heavies. Considering its very solid armour, this mobility is definitely not bad.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The M-IV-Y does not have any special consumables or provisions.

Calibrated Shells:
Improved ventilation can work well on this tank, it would make all the crew parameters better, importantly improving its reload by 0.3s to 13.3s, and its dispersion to 0.355 (instead of 0.362 without vents). Vents would also increase traverse speed, view range, and give it 0.1s better aiming time (down to 3.4s).
Using calibrated shells increases penetration. While you do lose some of the overall capabilities of the tank, calibrated shells can allow you to penetrate more tanks with standard ammo (of course premium as well). This is important as it can not only increase effective DPM (by allowing you to bounce fewer shots, and to use less premium ammo), but it can also compensate for the poor accuracy by being able to penetrate more areas.

Calibrated shells increases AP penetration from 218mm to 229mm, APCR from 265mm to 278mm, and HE from 53mm to 58mm.

Improved ventilation can work, and the main reason to use it is to lower the magazine reload, as the fast magazine reload is really the main trait of the tank, and it would be min-maxing on this trait.

Enhanced Armour/Improved Assembly:
Both improved assembly and enhanced armour are good equipment choices on the M-IV-Y. Enhanced armour just makes the general armour better, the main difference would be to improve the weaker bar on the upper plate, and the area of the inner turret when you raise the gun up.

That being said, that’s not many areas, and the turret and upper plate are still very strong even without enhanced armour (strong enough that only about 310mm+ HEAT can reliably penetrate both). If you feel that’s the case, then instead use improved assembly, which takes this tank’s very good 1850 base HP and boosts it to 1961 HP, making it among the higher HP tier 8 heavies.

Vertical Stabilizer/Refined gun:
As the M-IV-Y is a heavy tank, it will generally be fighting in closer range brawls, and constantly be moving to wiggle the hull or to shoot enemies. Vertical stabilizer helps to improve accuracy when the tank is constantly moving, making it more consistent in closer ranges.

However, while refined gun generally isn’t as useful on a heavy tank, its very beneficial to use on the M-IV-Y, and is arguably the better choice.
This is due to the tank having very good gun handling, and quite mediocre dispersion. Refined gun makes the accuracy of the M-IV-Y very consistent, while not losing out too much on handling/aim time, as they are already good.

Gameplay advice

The M-IV-Y plays very similarly to the T54E2, with strong hull armour, strong turret armour, and a reliable 105mm gun. Both tanks also have a large hatch weakpoint and similar mobility
Though the overall gameplay is quite similar in terms of positions you take, the way armour is used, and how your tank moves, but M-IV-Y does play slightly differently with the way it uses the gun.
This gun has some characteristics that can be very useful in battle, almost like a hidden ability, but its quite hard to fully lay out in one section, so these are listed in the next section, below this one.

Use gun depression:
The M-IV-Y has a good -8 degrees of gun depression, and both a very thick turret and hull. it excels in gun depression positions, just like many similar 105mm heavy tanks. You won’t be impervious though, as the hatch sticks out on the turret, so make sure to pull back after every shot and to hide the hatch behind the gun.

Elevate the gun to hide the hatch:
You can practice this in training rooms, or just do it in live battles with trial and error. Its an important skill to learn in this tank, its demonstrated in the image below.
To hide the hatch as much as possible, the gun needs to be at maximum elevation angle and turret needs to be turned right (aim towards the top right of your screen). Due to the hatch’s height, its not enough to just raise the gun upwards, the turret must also be turned towards the right. If you have played other tanks with similar hatch weakpoints, such as a T54E2, you should be well practiced with this.

Fake your reload:
Thanks to having many shells in the magazine, a long intra clip reload, and a short clip reload; its very easy trick enemies into thinking you still have more shells to shoot, even if you don’t.
This situation shouldn’t come up too often due to the nature of this gun, however if it does, using this tactic can hold enemies back until you are actually ready to shoot.

Generally the best thing to do for faking a reload is to aim at the enemies, as you would do if you were actually reloaded. Make it look like you are ready and wanting to shoot at them. Move forward, act aggressive, but don’t push up so far that it exposes your tank; similarly, try to avoid reversing (or doing it obviously) enemies generally take it as a sign that you are reloading and they should push.

You can use reversing to bait enemies into thinking you have no shells. If you are reloaded, or just have 1-2s left until you reload, reversing can bait enemies into pushing forward aggressively, which can allow you to put shots into them.

Don’t chase enemies alone if they have over 1200 HP:
In battle, you don’t really get to pick and choose what fights you get into. However, try to avoid battling enemies alone if they have more than 1200 HP; or if you don’t have enough hitpoints to last the 21s it would take for you to take out the enemy. As the M-IV-Y deals damage more like a regular tank, it can’t actually “clip out” enemy tanks quickly, even if they have less HP than the magazine potential damage. This means that if you are to fight an enemy 1-on-1, expect them to shoot you a few times.

Understanding the gun of M-IV-Y

The gun system on the M-IV-Y is actually very interesting, and it presents the player with many opportunities to excel with the tank. If played correctly, this gun system is actually quite overpowered, as it allows the player to decide when they get to “boost” their DPM.
Timed correctly, an M-IV-Y can have permanently boosted DPM, or basically a permanently active adrenaline consumable.

Battle situations:
-In any tank you play in WoT Blitz, a firefight between your tank and the enemy team’s tanks generally doesn’t require you to fire on-reload for 21 seconds straight. Usually there are breaks in the fighting where you reposition or the enemies don’t expose themselves; alternatively, your tank is just not often in a situation where it needs its maximum firepower capacity (such as in a 1 on 1 fight with an enemy, or in moments where you would usually activate the adrenaline consumable).

-Essentially, there are breaks in the battle, and you don’t usually need to fire on-reload due to this. However, these “breaks” in the battle are less noticeable in regular cyclic gun tanks or other autoloaders; as you have such rapid fire when shooting the magazine, and its such a contrast to the long clip reload (usually 16-23s). This is the opposite of the M-IV-Y, which can take great advantage of these breaks in the combat to “recharge its adrenaline”.

Why this gun system is OP if played right:
In the M-IV-Y, you are fully in control of choosing when to have “adrenaline boosted” DPM. For these 3 reasons:

1: Combat between your tank and the enemies generally doesn’t last for the whole duration of your clip unload. This means that often, you get to fire at full capacity (6.98s reload/2665 DPM) until the enemy retreats. You rarely ever need to actually use all 4 shells in one single, unbroken engagement.

2: A 13.3s-13.6s clip reload means that you can easily and quickly prepare a full magazine, even if you still had 2-3 shells left. Due to this short time, its also easy to prepare pushes or relocating in advance (explained below).

3: The intra-clip reload to put in the next shell (6.98s), is over half the time it takes for the whole 4 shell magazine to reload. So often, after an enemy retreats, there’s no reason to wait for your next shell to load, just reload the entire magazine.

This means at any downtime during the battle, you can decide “I want to reload and have 2665 DPM”, its the equivalent of “I want to activate my adrenaline now”, but instead of a 15s duration, you get 21s; and instead of it being immediate and a 1-time use, you have to wait 13 seconds before you can use that “adrenaline” DPM, but you have an infinite number of these uses.

Due to its 6.98s intra-clip reload, and its large capacity of 4 shells with long 21s unload time, the M-IV-Y basically never has to deal with enemies while its reloading. It either will still have shells left in its magazine, or it has the chance to fully reload. Its a very strong and almost overpowered gun system, considering its DPM while unloading is 2665, far above any other 105mm heavy tank in tier 8.

When to reload your magazine: 
-Plan ahead, you will need at least 10s at minimum (but ideally 13s), which isn’t long at all in a battle.

-If you decide “I will chase down XXX tank”, or “I should push XXX enemy with my 2665 DPM”, or really any situation where you think “my partially loaded magazine isn’t good enough”, then start reloading.

-Generally try to make sure you have 10-13s of downtime for this, for example, if there are no enemies close enough or exposed enough for you to shoot; or, if you think that getting to an enemy would take about 10-13s.

While you won’t “clip out” any tank quickly, you will be able to gun them down with the higher effective DPM that your tank has (2665 DPM) when unloading.

When to NOT reload your magazine:
Don’t reload if you can see an enemy driving towards you, reloading in that moment would be the worst possible action; in this case, just unload the magazine on the enemy as normal, and the reload comes automatically. The same goes for if you’re in the middle of a fight, there is no point to going on a 13s reload if the enemy is right in front of you. 

Overall

Armour – 7.5/10
Gun – 7.5/10
Mobility – 7.5/10
Speed – 8/10

M-IV-Y is overall a great tank. 

Armour is very strong on both the hull and the turret, and side armour is decent. Cupola is somewhat large and somewhat weak, but not terrible.
Gun has great handling & penetration, but mediocre aim time and dispersion. DPM, reload and intra clip are all great if used correctly. Gun depression is a good -8 degrees.
Mobility is great, with a strong acceleration rate and good traverse speed. Reverse speed is very good. Medium terrain performance is decent, but not as impressive as hard terrain performance.
Speed is good for a heavy, at 40km/h.

The main point of this tank is its different gun system, which is quite unique and offers a different way of playing the tank compared to any other autoloader, auto-reloader, or cyclic gun tanks in the game.

Is it worth getting?

With all the mention of it having an “OP gun system”, you would probably think its definitely worth getting, however, for most players its not. Most players who just want the tank’s gun, armour, and reliability without some strange “adrenaline non-auto-autoloader” are much better off going for a T54E2, which is essentially an M-IV-Y but with a regular gun and more gun depression.

However, if the unique gun system of the M-IV-Y appeals to you, or you are a good player and know that you are skilled enough to utilize that “adrenaline DPM”, then the M-IV-Y is worth getting.

The M-IV-Y is worth 9,500 gold, the tank is quite statistically strong, but also feels comfortable and quite unique in gameplay due to its different gun.

Most recently sold for:

New release crates – October 2022
Prize draw event -January 2023

Historical Note:

M-IV-Y is a real tank, it was drawn up as one of the prototypes designed by H. L. Yoh, though in real life it was meant to be a medium tank, and not a heavy.

Yoh tanks had a few different gun loading mechanisms designs planned for them, including loading assists, a fully automatic loading mechanism, or a drum magazine, so its very likely that the M-IV-Y would have incorporated one of these systems for its gun.

With the long intra-clip reload of this tank, the version in game most likely is meant to represent a fully automated loading system (the regular faster autoloaders in game are generally drum magazine tanks).

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