ollonborre

Considering how the Pepsi AP performs at tier 6 I would say the Baltimore is murderous with smoother gun handling. Shells are almost the same AFIK.

That is a horrible idea. Hinden does not need better torps and the Zao does not need more range. None of the Zaos issues if you like are firepower related, she got that covered nicely. What bothers the Zao is low HP (partially offset by trollish armor), gun angles and torp angles.

What even is this? Anyways your torps your responsibility. Throwing a message in chat and hoping the other guy reads it can sometimes work though. Still as others have said and will say (also the streamers btw) is don't torp from the second line in general.

This is mostly beacuse those ships are old as hell. Also the NC recieved a large accuracy and turret angle buff a while back which made the ship much more playable. And during the Bismarck campaign everyone got a Bismarck, even people who never played battleships or had anything above tier 6. So offcourse those stats are going down the toilet.

Yes offcourse, but that also comes into the knowledge on what your secondaries are capable of. The bulk of the secondaries lies in the 100 mm guns. 100 mm HE divided by 6 is 16.6 mm of HE penetration. That means basically every superstructure and otherwise weakly armored part is going to shatter your HE and deal no damage (it can still cause fires though). In order for your secondaries to actually deal damage you need to spec for IFHE. This brings up the penetration to 21.58 mm, so now you can actually deal direct damage. If you don't spec for it then your secondaries are just firestarters. Pretty good firestarters but you have to accept that they won't do any damage to almost anything directly.

The Roon nerf made little sense. As for the Hindenburg, it has a bit of everything and with the 1/4 pen HE buff it almost has no clear weakness apart from a slow top speed and 12.3 km detection. Still it is not like the nerf did that much. You go from 8.8 seconds to 9.7 with reload mod, so you can still pump out DPM.

Fuso, Leander, Nurnberg, Bayern, Warspite, QE, Budyonny, Pensacola, Arizona, Shinonome. Come to think of it I don't think there is a single tier 6 ship I have played that I did not enjoy playing. Yeah I will heavily disagree with you on this one. IMO tier 6 is one of the most balanced tiers currently and the only thing that screws it over is the constant up tiering.

I don't think so, not when compared to the other tier 6 CL's (again I never played it so I could be wrong). I think the main reason why people don't care about the Dallas is because most people had the Cleveland and did not bother to regrind tier 6-7. Also the Helena somewhat overshadows the Dallas in terms of player oppinion so getting any sort of meaningful info out of the Dallas is tricky.

Pensacola may not offer a similar playstyle, but it is a good operation ship. AA that melts planes, AP that penetrate everything or straight up overmatches, 10 guns, good HE, excellent gun angles and really nimble. Tankiness is going to be an issue but I found that you can just straight up delete most DPM machines that try to have a go at you.

Which is obviously why the NC is a top pick in tier 8 ranked and post buff it is one of the strongest tier 8 BB's with god tier AA, hard hitting accurate guns and stupid concealment. On topic, I did not like the Gneisenau. But I did not like it because I played it like a standard BB, and in that case the guns are not reliable enough and does not spit out enough shells for my taste. However the ship itself is great. Turtleback, good speed, great secondaries, great AA and torps. I might rebuy it and run a secondary build for the lols as I do think that is the way it should be played. Either that or an AA build.

Never played the Dallas or the Helena, heard they are pretty good though. I got the Cleveland which is probably one of the best silver cruisers at tier 8 right now and I fully recomend it. Can't comment overly much on the rest of them but they rely more on proper positioning and island cover in order to bring out their full potential. The Pensacola (or Pepsicola) I have played though, and it is more of the standard heavy cruiser line. The Pensacola get 203 mm guns at tier 6 with the trademark US heavy AP (better penetration and they are more effective against angled targets essentially). The Pepsi is IMO a really good cruiser for tier 6. It is squishy and has a huge citadel, but: - It is really nimble. It has the tightest turning circle of the tier 6 tech tree cruisers and the second best rudder shift. Dodging torpedoes and shells is fairly easy and manuvering in tighter spaces is pretty comfortable. Speed is on the lower end with 32 knots but it is manageble. - Firepower. 10 203 mm guns with the superheavy AP and pretty good HE means you have the heaviest broadside among the tier 6 cruisers. Your AP will obliterate anything that gives you broadside and even battleships will have to angle against you. The HE does solid damage with a pretty good firechance so if targets angle you are never useless. Turret traverse sucks though, at 45 seconds. Expert Marksman is a must have, and the 15 second reload is also pretty painful at times. - The AA on the Pepsi is also really good. Your long range AA has the highest damage and your mid to close range AA is very powerful. Add defensive AA on top of that and you will eat planes. Biggest limitation is the range however. In order to be a somewhat decent escort AA range module is a must (not that there is anything better really in that slot). All in all the Pepsi is a pretty good early heavy cruiser, with clear downsides (gun handling, armor) but also some definite strenghts. Which ship you should go for, well it all depens id you either want to just try out the ships or have the Worcester or Des Moines as an end goal. My tip would be to get both if you really can't decide, but if you look at it this way, the Pensacola is pretty representative of a heavy cruiser, and the Dallas is very much a light cruiser. Playing either of them will give you an idea how the following ships will play.

You missed the Scharnhorst radar post by the same guy.

Isn't the average age of wargaming titles late 20's early 30's?

True, but with that reload, penetration, 30 mm plating overmatch and 2.0 sigma that AP almost completely overshadows it IMO. Also while it does have probably the most consistent BB guns I have put my hands on (apart from Yamato) it still has BB dispersion after all, and 8 shells is just not enough to make it a reliable HE spammer. Not to mention less HE alpha and less penetration. HE on the Republique is more of a anti bow on weapon and switching to it is not that punishing thanks to the reload.

The sad part is that this operation is not that hard per se. The problem is, perhaps unsurpsingly, lack of knowledge and IMO the repair circle being active from the get go. Starting with the knowledge bit, people have no clue in general how this op works. Now I understand that it takes a few games to get the hang of it, but it certainly feels like every teammate I have got today is playing that op for the first time. You either have a big passive blob that slowly creep forwards with no purpose, 1 single suicidal cruiser going for the transports, all cruisers go for the transports but then not moving further or quick enough, a lone BB tries to hunt down the CV and failing, BB's sniping from the third line, the list goes on. My second problem is that repair circle. Why is it active from the start? The ships you face early on die very quickly and pose little threat. So why the need for a repair? This just means that the team is reluctant to support one another until the Missouri spawns because "muh healing". If you play a BB and take point like a good boy your cruisers stay in the healing aura just enough distance away so that the Lexington can molest you. And if you play a cruiser ready to shoot down planes and punish those DD's you will find your own BB's sitting in the repair circle touching themselves and you are now at the mercy of a bunch of forts and a Missouri.

This pretty much for every secondary build. However in Operations secondary builds are arguably equally powerful or even more powerful than stealth tank builds. Reasoning behind this is since bots tend to rush you and sometimes spawn close you don't have to spend time on proper positioning like in a random game, they come to you. And since there is a high number of targets avaliable being able to effectively damage and even kill 2 targets at the same time is sometimes invaluable. I run secondary Scharnhorst in the current operation and it works like a charm.

With PFT I assume you are meaning BFT (basic firing training)? I would not pick directional center, it is not that useful compared to PM for a 1 point skill. Also IMO a secondary build kind of needs manual secondaries to reliably apply damage. With that being said the Scharnhorst basically benefit from every german BB captain build and most cruiser builds. A core secondary build might look something like this with your own option of either SI or BFT (both are good, but I prefer the extra heal) http://shipcomrade.com/captcalc/1000000000000010000001001000100019. Or just go the standard tank stealth build that works on every BB: http://shipcomrade.com/captcalc/1000000000100010100001000100000119 As for playstyle, well it plays like a big bulky cruiser and is most comfortable at mid-close range. Overangle and try to bait shots at your broadside since most BB's you face can and will punch through your nose. Honestly this video explains most of it and is still relevant:

As with the Zao example you are missing one tiny crucial detail: BFT only effects guns with a caliber of 139 mm or below. So in that case DE is just a straight upgrade and adds to your overall damage output.

Put it into a pile until something interesting comes along.

Well, have you fired a gun? I'm thinking here more in the way of a MG or a assault rifle and not a rifle. With those you have controll over where the shots go, but more specifically in an MG there is certianly some real life RNG involved with shots deviating due to your own handling or depending on the barrel. Same thing with an assault rifle. In a stressed situation your first shots will be on point but if you are moving about and "slack" with the recoil shots will start to deviate naturally. RNG is certianly present, sometimes to a stuoid degree. But you do still retain some controll over your aiming, it is just not a prayers game.

If you don't earn positive rewards with a perma camo on a tier 10 (even without premium) you are doing something very wrong. Let me put it this way, if you get "bad" rewards in a Kebab and Moskva with ~50k damage and 1300-1500 average XP, what will you get if you have a similar performance in any other tier 10 with a perma camo? You guessed it, virtually exactly the same. The ships might not be the most popular, but saying that the main reason for their unpopularity is bad rewards that is just false. Also the Kebab sits at the top with average damage, and second place in winratio and XP for tier 10 DD's. Clearly bad.

Not disagreeing, altough I would probably go CE first anyways since the range is so short on the Nueve and that extra window where you can move about inside firing range is invaluable. My post was more directed to the OP's next skill to go for. He said he was grinding for DE but CE is much better to go for next. And when you have CE and IFHE then you can go for DE (if you have SI as your first 3 point skill, that extra heal is too good to pass up IMO).

Cursed- HIV. I can't find much enjoyment in it. Every time I play it I just wish I picked the Zao instead. Blessed- Don't know, Arizona I guess? Got it from a christmas container 2 years ago, never played it until late last year because reasons. And then I played it and now I almost feel dirty when I take it out of port.

I would work towards CE. IFHE nerfs your firechance, but in return you get raw damage increase (and still a firechance). And concealment is the bread and butter of every ship in the game so not going for it puts you at a disadvantage.