Panocek

I might risk saying its working as intended - after all, nothing promotes grinding new lines, buying premium, burning free exp better than "he haz better sheep than me, unfair plane". Until you realize Shima have guns effective enough to remove turrets from your Gearing/Khabarovsk, so you end up with merchant vessel...

Then next hull upgrade for Dank Carolina here I come Dank Carolina even stock is 10/10 balanced. non premium

I don't know where you have equipment discounts, no price nerfs for me.

It was developed that way so only "willing" to participate with anime ships can use them. But you can freely swap ports yourself - copy content of interesting port/map from res/spaces into res_mods/spaces/Dock_Japan

#justUmikazethings

You can't call USN 203 a solution for Cleveland derpy ballistics either, especially on Baltimore and Des Moines - So what you can reach 18km, when shell time to impact is 14s And while Des Moines surpasses Cleveland in rate of fire and overall firepower, she have big and glass citadel, not exactly best combo against 406+ sledgehammers. If you want semi viable cruisers for long range shelling, get ze Germans or IJN - although post patch Mogami might be Turd of the Line, while Myoko suffers from glacial turret traverse. At the end you're treated with Zao, basically ultimate cruiser... which is expected to get nerfhammered back into Shelf of Turds

Cleveland is stronk rekt machine at close distance against most ships really. <10km AP on broadside crusiers and BB superstructure can be lethal, with that RoF she mops up destroyers just fine Cleveland is actually better suited for combating tier 8 cruisers than Pensa and New Orleans - 152 AP is more than able to citadel 100-127mm citadel armor at close range where Cleveland should be anyway. Add to that enough volume of fire you can pummel ships with both AP regular pens and HE, she has hitpoints on par with T8 cruisers while her citadel layout favors her immensely at close range

Considering Cleveland gets 17s shell flight time with AFT, you can't really make use from that range If you want range, go IJN battleships, maybe German cruisers. USN ships in general are least suited for long range shelling due to derpy ballistics.

If I recall correctly

I would be surprised if WG won't add them as they have model already (Atago). Though they won't happen in single set of missions, wild guess being one of Kongo sisters and Takao/Maya. With Takao being first. IIRC there are few Myoko sisters that could be added from anime alone, with some more ships if WG reaches for Manga supplies Bigger question for Brynd/other WG employee - can we expect proper voiceover for Arpeggio ships and how soon™ it will arrive?

I'll just shove my totally not sealclubbing Umikaze captain into her

Which often ends with them being spotted by DDs and sniped by bottlesheeps. Also cruiser still can get torped as these babies get bigger and fatter with tiers, while torps increase in speed. And no sane CA skipper will trade camouflage module on place of better torpedo detection.

Zao have the best traits to use in current World of Battleships/World of Torpedowalls meta - the best camo value from all cruisers, the best top speed, the best cannon ballistics (trajectory and shell velocity) combined with excellent HE damage and fire chance. And she packs powerful, although short range torps on top of that. Des Moines is short range specialist with her rate of fire, post patch she will be also excellent AA escort ship. As usual for Murrica, shell velocity is on slow side, severely crippling her long range performance. Even hitting manoeuvring DDs past 8km isn't that obvious, leaving her to be most team dependant, either spamming and missing shells left and right or waiting till your team gets an advantage so you can get close and personal.

Yea... And with so bad camo you basically have a cruiser with DD hp pool and no citadels, but losing turrets every time someone fart at you

I gave her a go on 1st test, when there was limit to tier 6. And AA wise she went from "OP" to "monster" - DP guns buffed from 36 to 91 (from 216dps to 273dps with AA on), 40mm Bofors got buffed from 54 to 68 I think? Which makes "upgrade" to Pensacola and Nope Orlean even more dubious in terms of AA effectiveness, as these lost not only DP guns range, but also quad Bofors dps, 108->99

MM somewhat mirrored teams also arrive in 5.3, although overshadowed by captain skills and AA changes. So post patch MM shouldn't stack 4 Shimas vs 2 Gearings, Kageo and Fubuki. Or Yamatos for that matter.

If you need to free exp things, that would be Fuso hull upgrade (at least B) and Pensa cannons, in that order. Pensa with awful turret traverse is less pain in the arse than tier 6 BB with 13km range

Keep in mind you still have TB for follow up. Or torp first and follow up with bombs, whatever. I guess bomb dmg can be even greater - my aim back then slightly off, both not in line and bombs hit Yamato mostly in rear half.

In test2 hotfix German hightier cruisers lost some AA and AA barrage got further nerfed to x3 dmg Although I'd say key ingredient to be sucessful in hightier carriers is speed - no derping within AA range, if you go bombing run, you go fast and hard. If you waste time turning around ships with TB then planes will go down fast, even from Zaos Then have fun playing with Midway with two imaginary Torp Bombers extra, I'm pretty happy with DB bombers performance now.

I wouldn't be so sure - fully decked AA Monty even with cruiser and other BB nearby still allowed 8/12 TB and about 6/12 DB to drop ordnance on rather well executed strikes from IJN carrier, that is without mindlessly turning planes around. Also I've tried Midway yolo bomb rush on three Montanas (no idea how well AA build) and not only most planes delivered payload, but half the force returned to the carrier.

Shima torps (or any torps really) can kill without hit - simply forcing BB/CA to turn to avoid torps from the side is enough to expose citadels, same applies for TB squads.

Another thing - ship after such bombing run becomes almost harmless to planes, so even if BB will heal up most damage, 2nd bombing run can follow up with torpedo bombers - Yamato in question lost almost half AA and secondaries in single bombing run.

And it is. Even single bomb hits can cause massive damage to DDs, while 3x7 DB manual drops can net some serious damage against battleships Add to that DB runs are much faster to execute, so plane losses can be minimal too, unless you attack whole fleet with cruiser escort, which AA got further nerfed in hotfix