Type 59

Last updated 27 September 2024.

Type 59 is essentially a T-54 that was moved to tier 8. It has good armour for a medium, great mobility, -7 gun depression, but a fairly unimpressive gun.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Special mechanics
5. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
6. Gameplay advice
7. Overall
8. Is it worth getting?
9. Most recently sold for:
10. Camo cost:

Armour

(The Type 59 in the images is using Enhanced Armour)

Drag slider right -> to view 180mm AP
Drag slider <- left to view 235mm APCR

Armour when flat and facing head-on:
Upper plate 220-230mm
Lower plate 195mm
Turret 285-800mm+ (weakest points 220-240mm)
Cupolas 210-360mm+

Side armour:
Type 59’s hull sides are 87mm thick, which is very good for a tier 8 MT. This allows it to sidescrape very effectively, which not many mediums can do.

Armour vs tier 7 tanks:
Due to the lower penetration level of most tier 7 tanks (150-180mm on AP, and 195-220mm on premium ammo), the Type 59 has almost apocalyptic levels of armour to tier 7 enemies.

Armour vs tier 8 tanks:
In tier 8 there are only a few tanks which will bounce of the Type 59’s upper plate on flat ground (Low penetration mediums and lights).

Most tier 8 tanks will easily penetrate the Type 59’s hull on flat ground. If its angled, some tanks may still bounce off the front.
The best way to bounce tier 8 tanks is to go hulldown, as it hides the hull. The turret is very strong, the weakest part is next to the gun at the bottom of the turret, most tanks will need premium ammo to penetrate here, and its not an easy shot to hit if the tank is moving or at a distance.

The hatches are small and not weak, enemies need to hit the dead center of the hatch or their shells will bounce.

Armour vs tier  tanks: 
Tier 9 tanks will not bounce off the hull unless it is extremely angled, and many tanks will have enough penetration to go through the turret cheeks (just like the premium rounds in tier 8).

In tier 9 battles, the most bounces will come from being hulldown or using gun depression.

Gun

Type 59 mounts a 100mm gun

-Reload time is 8s for 280 alpha, giving it 2100 DPM.
-Penetration is 181mm on AP, 241mm on APCR, and 50mm on HE.
–Estimated aim time is 4.0/4.2s
–Base aim time is 2.5s, but it can get down to 1.92s.
-Dispersion is 0.353/0.300
–Gun handling is 0.14/0.14/0.08, or 0.12/0.12/0.07 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -7 degrees

Among all the tier 8 100mm guns, the Type 59 has by far the worst performing one. Its DPM is relatively low, dispersion is poor, and aim time is slow. While the gun handling is not bad, fairly average for a medium, but the penetration is just barely better than other 100mm guns.

-7 gun depression is actually extremely good considering how this tank has a rounded turret similar to a T-54, low profile, and strong hull armour.

While its gun stats are unimpressive, its still usable thanks to the other strong traits of the tank: its gun depression, mobility, and armour.

Mobility

-Top speed is 56km/h forwards, and -20km/h in reverse
-Acceleration rate is 20.6 hp/t on hard terrain, and 19.4 hp/t on medium terrain.
-Traverse speed is good, 62 deg/s on hard terrain, and 58.3 deg/s on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are 0.8/0.85/1.

Type 59 has very good mobility considering the armour it has. Its acceleration and top speed are both above average, and its traverse speed is good. In tier 8 its definitely one of the faster mediums considering it has quite good armour.

Since the variation across terrains is so little, the Type 59 is able to even drive in water and it loses very little mobility.

Special mechanics

The Type 59 has the Adaptive Concealment mechanic.

This mechanic allows the Type 59 to be very sneaky in battle, as it can very quickly reset its camo, which is very useful when you need to reposition.
The 7s camo reset also works perfectly with the 8.0s reload of the tank, since if you retreat into cover after shooting, you will already be unspotted by the time you are reloaded with another shot.

Another feature of this mechanic is the red eye above enemy tanks. This lets you know what tanks are currently able to spot you, and also lets you know exactly when you are spotted.

Overall this is a very good mechanic for a medium tank, as it allows you to control the situation very easily, you know who’s spotting you, you don’t have to wait 3s for the lightbulb to know that you’ve been spotted, you can reset your camo before you even reload your gun, and you can easily run away from a flank due to 7s camo reset time.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

Type 59 has no special consumables or provisions.

Gun Rammer:
Since the Type 59 has fairly low DPM, it needs to use gun rammer. With a gun rammer it has an 8.0s reload with 2100 DPM, which isn’t anything special, but for its higher alpha of 280 damage, its decent enough.

Its penetration is decent enough that the tank doesn’t struggle to penetrate most enemies it faces; calibrated shells is not nearly as useful as the gun rammer on this tank.

Improved Optics:
Type 59 has the joint best base view range for a tier 8 MT, with improved optics it has 296.5m, which allows the tank to spot tanks at a more comfortable distance than most other mediums in tier 8.

Enhanced Armour:
Despite having fairly unimpressive base HP of 1370, the Type 59 has an emphasis on its good general armour as a medium tank, so using enhanced armour does actually benefit the tank massively. It allows the tank to bounce more on its lower plate when facing tier 7s, bounce more on the upper plate against tier 8s, and bounce more tier 9s on the turret.

Enhanced Armour improves:
Upper plate from 220mm to 226mm.
Lower plate from 195mm to 201mm.
Weakest areas of turret from 220mm to 230mm.

Refined Gun:
Due to the Type 59 having such poor accuracy of 0.353, it benefits much more from having refined gun than vertical stabilizer. The Type 59 still has decent gun handling of 0.14/0.14/0.08, which isn’t bad for its 280 alpha. Refined gun will improve the dispersion from 0.353 to 0.300, which makes a huge difference to how effective you can be with this tank’s gun, especially at mid to long range.

Gameplay advice

Type 59 plays fairly similarly to the tech tree T-44, just with better mobility and much more armour, but a worse gun. Its a fairly easy medium to play once you get used to the constraints that the gun has, as its armour and mobility can really allow this tank to work very well.

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General gameplay:
The Type 59 should be played just like it has the armour of a typical medium tank. Don’t rely too heavily on the armour, but it can be used very effectively if you know your enemy’s penetration.

Use the Type 59 on the medium flank, this is where the terrain is favourable, you can use the terrain to increase the armour while using gun depression, and be basically impenetrable to other medium tanks. Mediums also have lower penetration than heavies, so the Type 59’s durability is much higher when it faces enemy mediums.

Generally try to hide the lower plate, but if that’s not possible, then angle the hull. Lower penetration tanks will really struggle to penetrate the tank, as shown in the images below.

Angling the armour:
One very strong aspect of the Type 59 is the fact that its lower plate is strong, which allows it to easily bounce tier 7 mediums without much issue.

Against tier 8 tanks, like in the images below, your lower plate will be penetrable, but angling and wiggling the hull while driving at enemies or reversing into cover make the tank extremely troll to deal with. Often enemies will panic and shoot a red area of armour due to your movement of the tank.

Always try to use gun depression and/or go hulldown:
The strongest points of the Type 59 are the fact it has a rounded T-54 type of turret in tier 8, and it also gets an amazing -7 degrees of gun depression. The Type 59 can be extremely strong in hulldown positions due to this, and its one of the factors that helps to mitigate its quite lacklustre gun.

Trade in alpha damage:
When fighting any enemy, trade damage shot-for-shot. Don’t ever get into a DPM battle with any tank, the tanks with worse DPM than you either have autoloaders or higher damage per shot, and the tanks that have lower damage than you will have much faster reloads and higher DPM. The best way to win an engagement is to conserve HP and use the Type 59’s armour while it reloads, and only expose the tank when you have a shot loaded.

Aim shots:
Due to its fairly low DPM of 2100, and its slow aim time, you can’t afford to miss shots (which ruins the DPM more). If you want to deal damage when it matters, don’t risk rushing shot, just let the gun aim in properly. 

With refined gun you actually have a pretty good dispersion of 0.300, which definitely helps with snapping in shots when you don’t have time to aim.

Sidescrape:
Tanks to having a very good 87mm of side armour, and 20mm of track armour, the Type 59 can sidescrape very effectively for a medium tank.

 

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Overall Type 59’s gameplay is quite a standard Chinese/Russian MT style of gameplay. Solid armour which allows you to use most positions very easily, good gun depression for going hulldown and holding positions, good speed to get to important places on the map, and overall a decent brawling and damage trading capacity in battles.

Overall

Armour – 9/10
Gun – 4.5/10
Mobility – 8/10
Speed – 8/10

Type 59 is overall a great tank.

Armour is good on the upper plate, lower plate, and hull sides. The turret is very strong, and armour is easy to angle and use hulldown.
Gun has great gun depression, decent gun handling, penetration & alpha. Aim time and accuracy are very mediocre. DPM fairly low but not terrible.
Mobility is good, a decent engine and great acceleration rate, with good traverse speeds. Reverse speed is average, great terrain resistances.
Speed is great, at 56km/h.

Type 59 is a great tank, but its not a tank that everyone will enjoy. Many players will be frustrated by its gun, which just has worse accuracy than it feels like it should.
Though, if you can get around that fact, and be ready to work with the tank’s lacking accuracy and lower level of DPM, its able to be very strong in a battle, as few other tier 8 tanks have such an amazing combination of gun depression, strong armour, and good mobility.

Is it worth getting?

Type 59 is worth it for players who like the Soviet/Chinese MT playstyle, having reliable armour and mobility. Type 59 differs slightly with its terrible DPM and less impressive gun handling, but its the trade-off you make to get such reliable armour and mobility on a tier 8 medium.

The Type 59 is worth 8,500 gold, it has very solid armour and mobility for a medium tank, which make it fairly easy to use. Equipping it correctly, you can mitigate the bad dispersion, have very good and easy-to-use armour, and usable DPM & alpha, making it a very good tank.

Most recently sold for:

6,500 gold (full bundle) – October 2021
5,500 gold (full bundle) – October 2022
4,500 gold (Starting price), 3,300 gold (Final price) in Auction – August 2023
5,500 gold (Tank only) – January 2024
5,500 gold (pop-up offer) – May 2024

Camo cost:

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