Make it rain.

Now you've outfitted and crewed your leFH and you know where to go, but... what are you supposed to do? Below you'll find a few tips and tricks how to play this tank well.

leFH Expectations

When playing the leFH, you should be able to do at least ~900 damage on average per match. If you still find yourself doing significantly less after about a 1000 matches, you're doing it wrong. At the very least, your average should be above 1k once you've reached about 2000 or more matches in it. When you just start out and have a small number of matches, your average will fluctuate more, but at around the 1k mark, it should have stabilized and be rising steadily.

The top players on EU have about 1260 average damage and more than 2 kills per match. Aim for this.

The leFH is a very tough tank to get Marks of Excellence on. The first mark is not that hard to pull off, but the second and third mark will be very challenging. Don't expect to just "accidentally" get them, unless you are an exceptionally good player. The tank's core playerbase is small compared to other tanks and consists of a bunch of people who've been playing the tank for many, many matches already. You'll be competing with veterans, and also with yourself once you're close to the top.

For the third mark I had to get a moving average damage of about 1650. It was hard. But it's doable.

The Good

There are a few key strengths the leFH has, that you should know very well.

Viewrange

The leFH has an excellent base viewrange that can be improved a lot with crew skills and the right equipment. You'll easily outspot other arties, mediums, heavies, TDs, and even some lights. That's why when things go south in the match, you can often rely on yourself to spot and aim at the approaching or hiding enemies before they can get a shot in themselves.

I often find myself going and scouting when there's only arties left on my team, or when the other remaining teammates don't feel like doing anything. Enemies will surprise you less often than they could when you drive other arties.

Take advantage of this.

Reload Time

With the my setup, my leFH is down to 7.2 seconds reload time. Even less when I'm on low health and/or using reload time directives. With this tank you'll play a much more active role in the match than with arties that reload longer. So be prepared to participate much more directly. Always keep an eye on your minimap.

• You can pretty much perma-track tanks and just keep shooting at them until they're dead, even if they get unspotted.

• When trading shots, you have a chance to win.

• You can afford to miss a shot or two, so you can take riskier shots that can be very rewarding.

A tip: Your reload is so short that in many cases you'll spend more time aiming than reloading. Abuse this when you just started aiming at a tank and are reloaded. Just take a snapshot. By the time you are fully aimed, you'll be reloaded already.

Ramming

The leFH is very heavy and sturdy. I've had more fragile tanks ram themselves to death from full health on me before. Even if you don't kill them, you'll most likely take a big chunk out of their health. So if they're getting close, prepare to hit W and receive them for maximum effect. (But don't forget to also shoot them.)

Elevation Angles

While the gun depression on this gun seriously sucks (looking at you, flat fuck ELCs), it can elevate amazingly and you can shoot over a lot of obstacles compared to other arties. The sooner you memorize the few angles you cannot shoot over, the sooner you won't waste any time aiming at them.

Shell Selection

The last big strength of the leFH is the fact that it somehow (*wink wink nudge nudge*) escaped the shell nerfs and kept its HEAT. My go-to strategy is usually to load HEAT at the beginning of the match since the soft targets will show up first, and then when I see heavily armored ones, switch to HE as needed, and back to HEAT when the soft campers get spotted in the back.

There's different opinions when you should HEAT at a soft target and when HE is better. My rule of thumb is, if the enemy is below the HEAT average damage roll range and I really need him dead, or if I know HEAT definitely won't pen, I use HE. You'll do best when you memorize which tanks you can sort-of-reliably pen with HEAT and use it on them. Anything that is totally made of paper though, like Type 64s, just use HE.

Splash damage from HE shells is not an advantage with this arty. If you miss with a leFH, you miss. End of story. Doesn't matter if it was HEAT or HE. So you might as well choose HEAT. But never willingly get yourself into a situation where the only thing standing between your victory and the enemy AT 8 was you having only HEAT shells left to fire at it.

The Bad

Unfortunately, the leFH also has some weak points. Be aware of these also:

Gun Range

By this I mean how far you can shoot. And that's... not far. For most maps, you'll manage to reach the area where the battle is happening, but especially in late game or when you gain map control too fast, you can't expect to sit in your spot and still be able to shoot things. Your shell travel time will also be a great hindrance (more about that further down). The best strategy here is getting as close as you can risk in the first place, and then keeping a close eye on the match developments to know when you have to move up.

Driving Speed

This tank is slooooooooooow. No amount of equipment or crew skills will change that, sorry. There are honestly worse problems the leFH has, but if you're used to mobile tanks or arties, you will have to entirely change the way you assess the match situation. Outrunning an enemy charge just won't happen. Better get in a good position to defend. Reaching the enemy cap probably won't happen either. Set up an ambush for the enemies who attempt to cap you instead.

Radio Range

This honestly used to be more of a problem before I got my crew skills. Nowadays, the radio range on my leFH is alright, but especially at first, you will struggle with this. Just try to get the radio skills as fast as possible and in the meantime try to keep up with your advancing teammates.

Hitting More, Better, and Harder

I may not be one to talk with my hit rate, but I like to think it could be much worse if I was less aware of how shots can be messed up fatally. I've also seen several people complain about the leFH being very inaccurate. So let's try to look at that...

• A lot of the time, your fully aimed shots will simply miss. There's nothing you can do about it other than simply come to terms with it. If you can see it going that way in a match, try not to give up or stress about it too much. You'll only mess up more shots that way. Just the other day I had a match that started out like this - every single shot missed until I had like 20 shells left. With these 20 shells, I got a Radley Walters and won the match anyway.

• Minimize your shell travel time by getting closer or aiming at enemies that are closer. Makes sense, right? The quicker your shell hits the target, the less you have anticipate where it will be in a few seconds. But keep in mind your firing arc: Shooting at a KV-1 when your shell is going to hit its front plate after flying in a completely straight line means you're too close.

• In the same vein, know your shell travel time. Get a good feeling for how long it will take for your shells to arrive in different ranges and keep that in mind always.

• Accept that some targets are not worth it. An enemy who knows how to dance well will dodge your shots effortlessly. Some enemies are able to dodge your shells simply by knowing your reload time and moving out of the 2 meters of blast radius just in time. An enemy who does this will be too busy to play his tank effectively as well, but you need to learn how to judge if pinning him is a more valuable contribution than damaging and killing other enemies at the moment.

• Also accept that some targets are just harder to hit for no other reason than them being small tanks, narrow tanks, weirdly shaped tanks, or tanks that have such a low HP pool that they'll be dead before you can even start aiming at them. You'll run into this trouble more often in matches with tier 4s. Hitting a target like an M8A1is gonna be more difficult even when it's standing completely still than hitting the broad side of an O-Ni. Load some HE and take it easy. RNG can only save them from being popped like a balloon for so long.

• Learn deployments and typical hiding spots/travel routes. If you already know where the enemies will get spotted, you won't have to switch to a different aiming spot in the last second, and will save a lot of time that can be spent shooting.

• Similarly, pay attention to where your teammates are and who they are. No point aiming at a spot where it's very unlikely that your basically blind heavy teammate will spot anyone anytime soon, no?

• If you can afford it in the situation, aim fully as much as you can. Taking a few extra seconds to aim will pay off most of the time versus missing and having to reload fully.